Weimar: Warts and Ali

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The Hayward Gallery is currently showing a large and stimulating exhibition called Neue Sachlichkeit and German Realism of the Twenties' This is just one part of an ambitious and timely presentation sponsored by the Goethe Institute of major cultural facets of the ill-fated Weimar Republic.

Following on from the massively populat film 'Cabaret' this whole programme of visual arts, architecture, music, theatre, poetry and films may yet elevate the thriving Weimar cult to a full-blown fad.

While avoiding simplistic (and defeatist) parallels, there is no doubt that the current capitalist crisis, governmental instability and growing political polarisation serve to induce a broader interest and comprehension of Weimar Culture' than hitherto.

Distrust of novelty

While in Weimar's grim austerity, the romantic, messianic, idealism of Expressionism was rejected for a concern with everyday tangible experience, now the Op art, Pop art, kinetics and cool Hockney Britain's swinging '60s have turned to a distrust of the headlong pursuit of novelty.

The Whitechapel Art Gallery's exhibition 'Art for Society' attested in an uneven way to the growing concern of artists to direct their work in social and political directions, stimulating a re-examination of past political artists, particularly of the twenties.

Last year's exhibition of the photo montage work of John Heartfield at the ICA was a milestone in this rediscovery process.

Study of people

The terms 'Sachlichkeit' (objectivity) and 'Realism' are useful only for differentiating this movement from earlier modes: the central theme of most artists in this exhibition is a study of people.

But the meticulous attention paid to details and textures generally serves to reinforce a denigration of bourgeois values as encapsulated in individuals and their surroundings, and a statement of bestiality as a norm.

A giant of this exhibition is Otto Dix, at last receiving the prominence he deserves. His large canvasses record in stunning detail the bloated, the mercenary, the putrefying and the warcripples.

An early work of his depicts three soldiers composed of artificial limbs and virtually held together by spare-part surgery, nonchalantly playing cards, their strap-on appliances rendered more shockingly by the montage method of the work itself.

"Drawing for Tom Win ers revie Realism Hayward Gallery, has central panel of jazzage decadent high-life flanked on either side by war victims on crutches and venal leering prostitutes.

Most of Dix's depiction of women rests on this stereotype, suggesting a hardened misogyny and a Protestant element to his social criticism.

Stylistically, the grotesque linear quality of Dix, plus his concern for detailed representation is reminiscent of Grunewald's 'Crucifixtion'.

Sheer ugliness

But .. his scorching portrayal of sheer ugliness, (see the old man's varicosed legs in Mismatched Lovers'!) places him in a category of his own. ws the art el of the Twe South Bank, chibition Nei nties' current London until Three other portraits are cooler but razor sharp in their characterisation, bordering on caricature.

Sinister night-life

The ashen-face of "journalist, Sylvia von Harden" casts a cold and penetrating gaze from a marbled table against a lurid red background-with monocle, cigarette and dubious gender, a monument to Berlin's sinister night-life.

In a strikingly different and expressionist work, the fragile figure of the "Poet Ivar von Lucken" is wafted up by the window's angle to ethereal heights.

George Gross, who worked in close liaison with le Sachli ly show January hkeit and ng at the 14,1979. background-by Christian Schad Dix during this period in the Rote Gruppe) is well represented in this exhibition with many large aggressive brushdrawings of war cripples, profiteers and sullen unemployed.

He brilliantly used a futuristic scrambling of forms to dissect and reveal the political realities of the Weimar Republic. Of particular interest were his watercoloured drawings, which seen directly, are as bright and dynamic as early works by Kandinsky.

Rudolph Schlichter shares with Grosz a sharp draftsmanship, but focussing on resigned and burnt-out individuals like "Unemployed Waiter"

Four portraits display a bold and free use of waterDisal colour on wet paper; however, his heavy oilportraits like "Oscar Maria Graf" are less successful.

Of particular merit are the many drawings by Max Beckman called simply 'Hell'. Executed in 1919, these dynamic and highly condensed compositions recount almost journalistically the instability, deprivation, criminality and social breakdown of that revolutionary year.

Electrically charged and angular, they relate more than other artists to the Expressionist tradition.

Some, like the depiction of Luxemburg's torture in the hands of the Freikorps, were used as the basis for larger paintings, but without significant improvement.

'Snap shot'

A near-photographic sense of realism is achieved by Chris Schad. In a series of portraits, individuals isolated in a crowd, stare out grimly without illusions, while other figures are cut off the picture so as to emulate 'snap shot' photography. (Full circle since the early photographers who rigidly adhered to conventions of painters' composition!)

An artist who perhaps most approximates the label New Objectivity' is Hans Mertens, who is represented by several 'still life' near monochrome paintings of banal household objects presented in a rigorous and satisfying composition.

The concern for surface appearance; the belief that appearances can instigate a greater potential for visual drama than abstractions has led many of these artists towards photography as a standard of representation Soldier by George Grosz or point of departure for their work.

It is therefore pertinent of the organisers of this exhibition to have included a substantial section of contemporaneous photography.

Much. of this is concerned with patterns and textures in everyday life, and some landscape photo y graphs that dramatically contrast the metropolis with the countryside, have theiri painterly counterparts.

Of special interest are some book and magazine covers designed by John Heartfield for the German Communist Party.

While not all artists associated with Neue Sachlichkeit were 'left wing' the overall direction of the movement certainly was.

The exhibition leaves no doubt of the artists' intention of producing a popular and accessible form of communication concerned above all with man himself and his created environment -the industrialised city.

While the form of this work. is static and not concerned with innovation, the content involved a language consistent with philosophical materialism and the experience of the working class.

This approach or movement has scarcely advanced since its decisive eclipse by the fascists taking power in 1933.

Unique opportunity This exhibition offers a unique opportunity to study both the painting style and the Weimar Era that stands behind it-warts and all.

The exhibition closes on 14 January, 1979. On Mondays the price of admission is reduçed to only 20p.

R. Yi flor 'oyed Wa Schlichte

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The full burden of cuts falls on working women Wed The family as we know it today is often suggested • as being representative of the natural order of things.

This myth has been ably exploded by Engels in his book-The Origins of the Family Private Property and the State.

He shows quite clearly that the tamiy unit and roles taken up within it are not rigidly fixed but change in line with the development and requirements of so The "nuclear family" in society. which married parents in each single isolated household undertake the full responsibility, for child-rearing and domestic labour has developed in response to the requirements of capitalist Ood Glorious Food -ong Live School Meals fought for by sections of the feminist movement, where it has been applauded as a progressive development.

In fact, it is a reactionary demand, which in practice would only reassert that the role of women lies in the domestic situation, one of the sources of oppression, and accepts their permanent isolation from the organised workers' movement.

The demand of wages for housework, seemingly "progressive" becomes a diversion away from the real source of oppression, and, by shackling the woman more strongly to the home and domestic labour, has the opposite effect, in the long term, to what is desired.

Penalised The . report from Sheffield, however, places the demand in an even more reactionary context, calling for those who refuse to stay in the home to be penalised.

The report goes on to say that the parental role is of paramount importance in "fashioning and forming opinions in young minds" and that logically, therefore, parents should have overall responsibility for. the problems of vandalism and hooliganism, including