Page 29 - Studio International - May 1972

machinism as an index of national power, its —which can be justified in his pedagogy but not in his
overriding insistence on `rootedness' —on art. For a defence of Strukturwissenschaft: Sheldon
Nodelman, 'Structural analysis in art and
man's coexistent status with and in landscape— anthropology', in Jacques Ehrmann, ed.,
made this impossible. The metropolis, the Structuralism, a special issue of Yale French Studies,
machine and the modern together symbolised New Haven 1966.
3For the association of art and politics at the time of
all that served to alienate natural man and to the November Revolution, see my 'Dissenting
disturb his natural order. Civilization, in the Ideologies and the German Revolution' Studio
International November 197o.
words of Hermann Löns, was but 'a thin veneer 4 The problem of the rationalisations of media that
underneath which nature courses, waiting until had relied very heavily on their emotional impact is
a crack appears and it can burst into the open.'19 a larger one that can be covered by these general
Due in no small part to Spengler's period comments. What appears significant, however, is
stylisations, and following the contemporary the way in which the hoped-for creation of an
iconography with the same import as traditional
polarisation of political stands into inescapable symbology, when coupled with the modernist ethos,
friend-enemy antagonisms (Freund-Fiend- seems to have effected increasingly generalised
meanings. That this was countered only by distinctly
Verhaltnis), the division of camps into personalised alternatives (Pabst and Klee are good
`ancients' and 'moderns' grew in pace as the examples) confirms for me the basic difficulties in
Weimar Republic progressed. The common the idea of indiscriminate 'objectification'. An
obvious political analogy with what happened in the
dilemma was coping with the encroachment of Neue Sachlichkeit era would be the interpretation
industrial methodologies, of collectivist of the 'science' of Marxism as not the rejection but
interpretations of human development; but the the synthesising of the utopian by building on
utopian ideas a firm scientific superstructure.
solution of the 'ancients' was to create an 5 Lotte H. Eisner, The Haunted Screen, Expressionism
amplified romanticism to combat 'modern' in the German Cinema and the influence of Max
Reinhardt, Berkeley & Los Angeles 1969.
idioms and to assert a potential rediscovery of 'Oskar Schlemmer, Buhne, a lecture of 16.3.1927,
`wholeness' in the correspondences between the reprinted in Walter Gropius, ed., The Theatre of the
individual, the Volk, and the natural universe. Bauhaus, Middletown, Conn. 1961, the most
And if the modernists showed themselves too accessible source for Schlemmer's theories.
7 Siegfried Giedion Walter Gropius: Work and
enthusiastic about what technological rationality Teamwork, London 1954.
could achieve, here, in contrast, was the 8 Maurice Maeterlinck, Menus propos, Le Theatre,
sleep of reason. 4 Riefenstahl Paris 189o. For the abstract theatre and the
Gesamtkunstwerk, see the anthology: E. T. Kirby,
And yet, a too rigid separation of ancient Still from Triumph of the Will ed., Total Theatre, New York 1969; and for a
from modernist ethos is to simplify a rather Photo courtesy Imperial War Museum contemporary appreciation: 'Das Buhnenbild im
more complicated situation. Both desired the "Gesamtkunstwerk"', special issue of
5 Fritz Lang Die Form. Monatsschrift far Gestaltende Arbeit, I, 3,
same thing —security —and both talked of the Still from Metropolis 1922.
place of the individual in the collective, of the Photo courtesy UFA 'Richard Wagner 'Essence of Drama is Knowing
establishment of order, and in the arts both through Feeling', in Kirby, ed., Total Theatre 5-8.
10 See Northrop Frye's discussion of the masque in
supported a medium of clarity capable of mass his Anatomy of Criticism, Princeton 1957.
appeal through a formal symbology of universal "Quoted by Lutz Becker, 'A Cinema of Ecstasy' in
idioms (though their interpretations of these the catalogue Germany in Ferment, Durham University
1970, where the other catalogue essays are
were opposite). It would, however, be most relevant to the theme of these notes.
inappropriate to rely on hindsight so as to " Siegfried Kracauer From Caligari to Hitler,
posit some kind of ideological continuity here. Princeton 1966; Eisner The Haunted Screen.
" Cf. C. K. Ogden, ed., Bentham's Theory of
Clearly this is not the case. But what is the emotional in creating an image of the Fictions, New York 1932 and Hans Vaihinger The
significant is that when the Nazis came to universe based on that of the theatre was in Philosophy of 'As If', London 1924. Also the
power their hybrid and opportunist theories fact to mix up the potentialities of art with comments on Bentham and Vaihinger by Wylie
Sypher in his Rococo to Cubism in Art and Literature,
could ally ancient ambitions and modern those of life. This confusion of functions— New York 196o.
techniques. Mythology could be materialized, itself determined by the social differentia in " Bull Kinser and Neil Kleinman The dream that
practicality given spiritual justification, and the their interpretation of art—was most damaging was no more a dream, New York 1969. The general
tenor of Kleinman's text usefully amplifies this point.
irrational given substance by wedding in transferring aesthetic idioms into life itself, "Moholy-Nagy, 'Theater, Circus, Variety' in
Volkish anti-modernism to the most advanced seeming to will it into artifice. But the triumph Gropius, ed., The Theatre of the Bauhaus.
techniques of mass communication. Their of the will was not theirs, but their opponents'; 16 I discuss the two formal structures mentioned
above, the fictive display stand and the
achievement was the creation of a backward- and it dissolved the existence of radical participational space, in the context of Soviet arts
looking utopia with the methods of a forward- modernism in the process. q in my 'On Constructivism', Artforum, May 1971.
17 Quoted by Jurgen Rühle, Literature and Revolution.
looking one. A Critical Study of the Writer and Communism in the
But does this tailor-made totalitarian 1 Walter Gropius The New Architecture and the Twentieth Century, New York 1969.
availability of modernist idioms tell us anything Bauhaus London 1935. 18 See : George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German
about Weimar art itself beyond the fact that 'That the Weimar period which produced an art Ideology, New York, 1964 for an admirable chronicle
of these ideas. Also relevant to this theme are : Hans
`total' ambitions are thus easily debased ? closely involved with its world functioning and with Kohn, Political Ideologies of the Twentieth Century,
its meanings saw also the development of the
A famous French modernist, Le Corbusier, Strukturforschung school of critical analysis seems no New York 1966; Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural
wrote of 'Architecture or Revolution', accident. For Kaschnitz, 'structure is the mode of Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology,
Berkeley 1961; Peter Viereck, Meta-Politics: The
implying that art could resolve life issues and action of that energy which in art stands symbolically Roots of the Nazi Mind, New York 1965; and for its
for those cosmic or divine forces as they reflect
hence prevent further revolutions." On this themselves in our conceptions and in our imagination. relationship to the arts : Peter Gay, Weimar Culture,
score, the utopian artists of Weimar certainly However, the concern for meanings basic to this New York 1970; Barbara Miller Lane, Architecture
and Politics in Germany 1918-1945, Cambridge,
failed. But it could well be argued that a far approach substitutes importance, or better Mass. 1968; and my 'Total and totalitarian art'
significance, for quality in its evaluations; and this,
more basic failure was in their very willingness too, is the limitation of these notes. Those who best Studio International, April 1970, which deals more
to think in these terms at all. Their social illustrate ideologies are, of course, not necessarily specifically with some of the points raised here.
" Herman Loris, Der Wehrwolf Jena 1917.
the best artists. Misunderstanding of this has
role-searching, their aesthetic generalisations clouded much judgement of twenties art, most 20 Cf. Meyer Schapiro, 'The Nature of Abstract Art',
and their compounding of the rational and evidently in the inflated reputation of Moholy-Nagy Marxist Quarterly, January—March 1937.
199