Page 27 - Studio International - May 1972

Industrialisation dehumanised and stereotyped modern, but its framing in terms of elemental Fritz Lang
Still from Metropolis
the individual, made him the slave of the order—and so to break down the barrier Photo courtesy UFA
machine. And in 1921, Capek used the word between the individual organism and its
`robot' to describe this condition. We find very temporal environment. His truly robot-like 2 Oskar Schlemmer
many presentations of the robot in the theatrical figures do in fact seem both temporal and Group of Figures 1928
Watercolour
arts of the twenties. Hauptmann, Kaiser and eternal, for any masking device serves not only 21 1/4 X 14 5/8 in.
Toller, all wrote 'machine plays'. But it was with to depersonalize but to abstract man, 'to Courtesy Marlborough Fine Art Ltd.
Reinhardt and with Piscator that this smooth down the presence of man and to 3 Oskar Schlemmer
consciousness found complete realisation in the facilitate the symbol', as Maeterlinck put it.8 Formation 1929
deployment of 'extras' as abstract units. Eisner Schlemmer's masked plays are in an important Watercolour
talks of Piscator as the perfect theatrical sense extensions of the Expressionist drama— 21 5/8 x 13 3/4 in.
Courtesy Marlborough Fine Art Ltd.
interpreter of the technological age for his but where the mask itself can stylise, exaggerate
constructional-formal use of collective masses; and interiorise personality elements to make
and of Lang's extension of this device, wherein
man is not active as man but a part of some
symbolic geometric patterning.5 In Metropolis,
perhaps the most potent symbol of its age, a race
of sub-humans play out their parts against the
backdrop of great machines.
But alienation was not itself the product of
the machine, but of the cult of efficiency
which characterised many aspects of twenties
life. This application of technological analogies
to human performance (and to art) gave
uniformity and measurableness a crucial
significance.
In 1927, a little-known painter and sculptor
who had turned his talents to theatrical
experiment spoke of being concerned 'with
what makes things typical, with type, with
number and measure, with basic laws'.6 It was
in the work of Oscar Schlemmer that
measurement and the machine came most
perfectly together to create, on a modest scale,
a strangely harmonious image of man's place
in the machine age. While he shared with
Piscator and Lang his formal and symbolic
transmutations of humanity—and indeed took
this concern to a more extreme position—with
Schlemmer the Weltbaumeister never seems as
remote as with the extravagantly epic theatre
or film. Siegfried Giedion has described the
impact of one of Schlemmer's pieces, the
Triadic Ballet of 1923 :
`The curtain rose upon a motionless figure before
a chrome yellow plane. It wore a many-
coloured wooden skirt shaped like a top,
surmounted by a breast-plate of varnished
leather; arms and feet were also lacquered and
the head was covered by a transparent helmet
crowned by a jaunty wooden knob. When the
music started, the figure responded with strong
rhythmic movements. While the armour-like
clothing restricted the range of possible
movements and gestures, it at the same
time gave added emphasis to every tiny
motion—like the action of a pendulum. Every
caper, every shake of the head, every movement
of the arms became exaggerated and
intensified.... It is conceivable that the effect
of this strictly disciplined movement, which is
in such striking contrast to our customary lack
of control, may be to revive in a new way the
human dignity that we have lost so utterly.''
Schlemmer's achievement was firmly
rooted in the belief that the cure for the ailments
of modernity was not the rejection of the

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