Page 50 - Studio International - December 1969

Art in man art and architecture which presented at mainly centred upon the activities of the
least the official face of post-war art in the Expressionists, the Dadaists, and of political
Communist half of Germany. The exhibition
East Germany was staged in the large, airy rooms of the artists of the stamp of George Grosz and John
Heartfield—Heartfield, of course, demon-
reconstructed Altes Museum in Berlin, and strated the way in which the Dadaists were
had been (so I was told) put together in the forced to become political by the terrible
Edward Lucie-Smith astonishingly short space of eight weeks. events of the time. Gifted realists, such as
Next to Soviet Russia itself, the DDR is the Barlach and Kathe Kollwitz, still remained
country which cleaves closest to the official very much part of the tradition which Hitler
Marxist aesthetic of socialist realism. Where, smashed.
for example, Cuban painters are free to follow After the holocaust, when art tried to re-
more or less any Western trend which takes establish itself in the communist part of Ger-
their fancy, those in the DDR must avoid many, it was natural that the painters and
'formalism'—that is, if they want to have sculptors who had resisted Hitler, and pro-
much scope for their talents. Though the tested against him, and suffered at his hands,
National Gallery in Berlin displays pictures should provide an important point of growth.
by Kokoschka, Feininger, Schlemmer, and West Germany identified itself with the west
even Jawlensky, the post-war abstract paint- as a whole— it was particularly open to influ-
ing of Paris and New York is regarded as clear ences from France, Britain and America, not
evidence of the decadence of the arts under only through political alliance but because
capitalism. While it is clear that the Marxist there was no single centre towards which the
art which is offered as a substitute often fails, artists of the country could turn. Hence the
even in its own terms, there is indeed a certain notorious eclecticism of painting and sculp-
historical logic for this rejection of the way in ture from the Federal Republic. On the other
which the visual arts have developed in the hand, artists working in the other half of the
west. country were shut off by political circum-
Thanks to Hitler, the continuity of German stances from any possibility of a similar
art was broken in the early thirties. Modern- eclecticism, and it is by no means quite certain
ism was condemned, and many important that they would have chosen that path had it
modern paintings were removed from German been available to them.
public collections, to be sold or destroyed. The tragedy of the visual arts in the DDR—
Even at the time when Hitler came to power, and it seems to me that there is one—lies in
This year the DDR celebrated the twentieth abstract art had not, with one important ex- the fact that artists have so often failed to live
anniversary of an existence which is still stub- ception, made an important contribution to up to their own announced ideals. On the
bornly unrecognised by most of the Western the German tradition. That exception was of present showing of Western art (Minimal Art
powers. One feature of the celebrations was a course provided by the artists of the Bauhaus. in particular) it seems clear that there would
large exhibition of contemporary East Ger- Otherwise, the history of modern painting had have been room for an alternative which based
itself, not on rarefications of aesthetic theory,
but on a sympathy with the ordinary con-
cerns of mankind. In England and in Italy,
for example, there was at least a momentary
attempt to establish a new 'realistic' art—the
Kitchen Sink painters were the product of just
such an impulse. Art with supposedly similar
concerns receives vigorous official support in
the DDR.
With the regime as patron, huge political
murals have been produced—distant and un-
worthy descendants of Delacroix's Liberty
Leading the People. Going round the exhibi-
tion in the Altes Museum, one soon began to
see that there was a standard formula for pro-
ducing these works. All heads are frontal.
Teeth are clenched. Eyes gleam with obliga-
tory optimism. In fact, the same visual con-
ventions are used to advertise the socialist way
of life as are used to advertise toothpaste in
England. The 'dignity of man' gets short
shrift in these works. Their hollowness, al-
ready self-evident, could be further demon-
strated by comparing various works by one or
two of the most favoured artists, and trying to
see how their work had developed over the
years. Walter Womacka, perhaps the most -
popular of all, officially, shows a slippery gift
for adapting his work to every wind—recently,
with a slight political thaw, he has aban-