Page 45 - Studio International - February 1969

Germany: The New Objectivity Richard Lindner
in front of Disneyland
2
Richard Lindner
42nd Street 1964
crayon and pencil
Robert Kudielka 71 x 61 in.

`Abstract' forms, completely divested of corporality, and only hieroglyphs: enigmatic signs, cave painting,
lapidary style, when thus regarded, form one pole. The other pole would then be the embedding of the
form in space, colour, grade. Aim: a fortunate combination of nature and abstraction...
(0. Schlemmer, Diary, 12.11.1924)

For German art, expressionism is more than Among these artists Richard Lindner, born in the head, the eyes, triangle of the nose...'.
one style among many: it is its predominant 1901, occupies a position of special importance The subdivision of the human figure into
characteristic. From Grünewald up to the —not only because of his age. Lindner's paint- basic geometrical forms coincides with the
present, progressive tendencies have concen- ings would be unthinkable without the pop New Objectivity theme of fitting organic
trated on exploiting an expressionist vocabu- culture of the New World, of which this things into the world of mechanical apparatus.
lary. This does not mean that the expressionist native of Nuremberg became a resident after However, the way in which 'man within
attitude has always produced the most his emigration from Germany in 1933. Never- space' (Schlemmer) is actually seen reveals a
important works: on the contrary, distin- theless his formal vocabulary can be traced difference of the first order. For Lindner,
guished art—at least in more recent times—has back to the sort of ideas that the young Schlemmer's anthroposophical problem, as to
frequently been produced by the very move- Schlemmer first noted down in his diary in whether nature and the machine can be uni-
ments which were in conscious reaction to 1915—`The square of the rib cage, the circle fied in the cosmos, no longer exists. His
expressionist trends. German painting in the of the abdomen, cylinder of the neck, cylinders `Mechanical Brides' sit in Macy's, the big
second half of the nineteenth century is domi- of arms and calves, ball of the joints ... ball of New York store, and lick lollipops, instead of
nated by the great neo-renaissance and neo-
baroque works : the classical stringency of
Böcklin, Feuerbach and Leibl is far superior
to the sentimental outbursts of Biedermeier
painting. And in the twentieth century, the
pre-eminence of German Expressionism
seemed unassailable, until only a few years
ago the rediscovery of the counter-movement
— 'Neue Sachlichkeit' —raised a host of doubts
about the validity of its reputation.
One reason why 'New Objectivity' has been
rejected for so many years may well be that
the term was originally coined to describe a
group of unimportant artists who, around
1920, propagated a rejection of the prevailing
Expressionist style and a return to naturalism.
These artists were not, however, merely con-
servative, but introduced, incidentally as it
were, a new stylistic element: in the work of
Scholz, Schrimpf, Kanoldt and others, the
architecture of the modern industrial land-
scape is raised to the status of a pictorial
structure, and not merely made to serve as a
pictorial subject. The standard concept of
realism as the faithful depiction of reality will
thus not suffice as a basis for understanding
New Objectivity. The movement must rather
be viewed in the broad context of all the
attempts made to re-define the position of
natural things in an environment changed by
technical progress. This definition would then
include the architectural intentions of the
Bauhaus and in particular the work of Oskar
Schlemmer. New Objectivity in this sense
means the adequate representation of life
within the framework of space dominated by
the rational human intellect.
We owe this profounder understanding of
New Objectivity less to art historians and
critics than to the work of a number of con-
temporary artists who have, more or less
consciously, continued to work in this idiom.