Art of Dispassion
Contextualising ‘Degenerate’ Art and Cultural Movements within the Political Climate of the Weimar Republic.
‘It was within the context of the Weimar Republic that the German arts flourished, undergoing what is considered by some a cultural renaissance, although I argue the arts were not renewing ideas of a former time but rather establishing a distinctly German movement with novel styles and new subject matter.’
1918 - 1933
The Weimar years should be contextualised as a period of polarisation; polarised politically, not only between the opposing forces of fascism and communism, but simultaneously polarised by the internal divisions of the left. The early years of Weimar politics can be reduced to a clash of conflict between those who supported the democratic socialism of the SPD, and those who sought a more radical Bolshevist vision for the future of Germany. Society itself represented a polarised image of extreme poverty amidst excess and opulence, and the nationalistic rhetoric left over from the Great War opposed the lived memory of trauma and mortality.
It was a period that experienced mass inflation and a stock market crash, both situated on either side of six ‘golden years’ of economic stability.Despite the economic hyperinflation that lasted until 1923 the creative arts industry was able to flourish as people exploited the opportunity to spend their daily earnings immediately, living amidst the constant uncertainty of how the value of the German mark would fluctuate from one day to the next. It was within this unstable environment that the arts found its inspiration
“the highest art will be one in which the thousandfold issues of the day are revealed in its consciousness”
— Richard Huelsenbeck - Dada Manifesto
Berlin Dada declared art an explicit vehicle for political expression. Huelsenbeck, professed the dawn of a ‘new art’ which, once brought to life would lead in turn to a social awakening. Dada Berlin, he believed, would be the counter-culture of the socialist revolution, ‘the international expression of the times, the great rebellion of artistic movements, the artistic reflex of all these offensives, peace congresses, riots in the vegetable market, suppers at the esplanade’