Politicizing Painting: The Case of New Objectivity

Abstract

In the September 1922 issue of Germany’s leading art magazine, Das Kunstblatt, editor Paul Westheim published the results of a questionnaire that he had circulated to contemporary writers, artists, critics, and historians of the time regarding the existence and status of a new trend in the visual arts: Neonaturalism. In his introduction to the article, Westheim wondered whether this new naturalism was just a passing fashion or, in fact, it was a necessary development that would supersede expressionism (369). Not surprisingly, there was no consensus of response. Somewhat myopically, E. L. Kirchner professed to see no evidence of a new naturalism in the visual arts (Westheim 375–76), while the dramatist Georg Kaiser and architect/critic Adolph Behne acknowledged its existence but questioned its validity as art (Westheim 383–84, 406). Other respondents, including Alfred Döblin and Fritz Wichert (director of the Mannheim Kunsthalle—the Mannheim Hall of Art), welcomed Neonaturalism as a healthy antidote to tired and worn-out aesthetic idioms (Westheim 371–73), while Ludwig Meidner waxed rhapsodic about the new trend toward detailed figuration, proclaiming his allegiance no longer to the expressive graphic mark but to “the object” (Westheim 382). Ultimately, though, it was George Grosz and Gustav Hartlaub who defined the terms of the debate for years to come.