Holland Cotter (Holland Cotter) on the pages of The New York Times reflects on the "Chaos and Classicism: The Art of France, Italy and Germany 1918-1936 years" in New York's Guggenheim Museum

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Holland Cotter (HollandCotter) pages TheNewYorkTimes reflects on the "Chaos and Classicism: The Art of France, Italy and Germany 1918-1936 years" in New York's Guggenheim Museum .

What was that, while New York City had not experienced in recent years, a lack of major exhibitions, "blockbusters", accompanied kilometer queues and record profits from ticket sales. So nice to see that the Guggenheim Museum has decided to take the risk and chose for his big autumn exhibition is not the most popular "among the people" theme - « Chaos and Classicism: The Art of France, Italy and Germany 1918-1936 years ».

break the bank Guggenheim does not succeed, in particular, because a large number of the artists are unknown to the general public. About the exhibition can also say this: those who come to the museum to experience the emotional lift, probably will leave perplexed - or even with a sense of wrong, a perversion of that period in the history of art. I personally found extremely exciting venture: a study period, which was nothing but a bomb ready to explode ...

«Synopsys' exhibition is as follows: after a devastating nightmare, what was the first for Europe World War II, many avant-garde artists recoiled from undermining the foundations of experimental styles such as cubism and futurism. They returned to traditional forms, and found inspiration in an imaginary classical past - the art of ancient Greece, the Italian Renaissance, constitutes for them the integrity and harmony. In a sense, "back to basics" was for artists salutary effect: it gave new impetus to those who were lost, who have not seen the point in going before the war started. However, the ideology of classicism, with its glorification of rigor, order and purity of style ("nothing more"), was picked up by gaining popularity figures from the worlds of politics, aimed at creating a new, monstrous social structure, where the "extra" elements were to be physically destroyed.

Elected Guggenheim approach to this subject are not new. The exhibition illustrates and complements the book, art historian Kenneth Silver (Kenneth E. Silver) «Esprit de Corps: The Art of the Parisian Avant-Garde and the First World War, 1914-1925», which appeared as early as 1980. The book is very well known, it teaches students, and encouraging that "in its explanation of" finally decided to do an exhibition. At the head of the project was put Silver himself, and he coped with the task perfectly well - not often you can see a large display, as accurately penetrates into the essence of the theme.

The exhibits are grouped into sections (chapters) . First - in a room at the bottom coil of the spiral Guggenheim. There we see two groups of works that are strikingly different from each other. In a long display case exhibited fifteen prints by Otto Dix (Otto Dix), belonging to the "War", these works convey the artist's memories of the trenches. Decaying corpses and mutilated bodies, living and dead ... Dix style evokes associations with Goya and northern Gothic elements of modernism are also present. On one face sealings soldier disfigured after surgery for skin grafts, looks like a Cubist assemblage.

In 1924, when the artist finished the series, to look at such horrors nobody wanted. Demand was quite different art, examples of which can be seen in the same gallery: Statue of young, naked beauties blooming, it is desirable to allegorical or send to the myths. Examples - Bronze "Galatea" of half-forgotten Italian Amleto Cataldi (Amleto Cataldi) or a sculpture of Maillol (Aristide Maillol) «Ile-de-France, depicting the proud beauty girl.

general, sculpture, with its rich ancient past and the pretensions to eternity, was a very fashionable form of art in the interwar period. In 1928, German painter Julius Bissir (Julius Bissier) wrote himself to sculpture his own head, work alludes to the fact that the statue is more important than the image of his present.

Speaking about the time as a reference is called, naturally, Picasso, who already in 1920 wrote heavy, like statues, figures of women in ancient dress. However, looking at some famous paintings of those years - for example, is very ambiguous, "Source", where a massive lady holding a jug on her knees with a long neck, you start to vaguely suspect that Picasso was not at all an exemplary priest of classicism, but rather parodied him. In any case, his experiments with the classics have been quite successful.

For some artists, this trend has become an occasion for merriment. For example, in the picture Fock Suzanne (Suzanne Phocas) her future husband, Jean Metzinger (Jean Metzinger) rests on a marble statue of Venus, as if drunk guest of the museum opening day. Another example: the fashion designer Madeleine Viognier (Madeleine Vionnet), created coats of crepe fabrics, and Raoul Dufy (Raoul Dufy), with its caricature of gellespontskih swimmers.

Among those who reacted to classical ideals seriously, were the artist Amedee Ozanfan (Amédée Ozenfant) and architect Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret), better known as Le Corbusier (Le Corbusier). Together they developed a new version of Cubism: strict, "purified" from all unions, with the laconic color and crisp lines. The new style was called "purism" (from the word pur - pure, unsullied, pure).

«Clean" - the notion of flexible, it has always been a lot of applications. In 1922 in Italy, Mussolini exalted "perfect courage" of the ancient Romans - according to one pro-Nazi author of those times, in order to "make Italians who were called names by foreigners," wop "and" mandolinschikami "in men". Dork with the imperial manners - just so Duce depicted Milanese artist Adolfo Wildt (Adolfo Wildt). Looking at them made a bronze bust from the shoulders of seven feet, one might think that Mussolini was a true colossus, although its growth was less than seventy feet. The new classicism transformed not only the size of Mussolini, but also the style of some artists, formerly troublemakers public safety - for example, radical Futurist Carlo Carrà (Carlo Carrà) began to write biblical scenes à la Giotto and his colleague in the avant-garde movement Mario Sirona ( Mario Sironi) and does become "a court painter, specializing in giant horse portraits of the dictator.

openly supported Mussolini, however, not all. Political preferences of Giorgio de Chirico (Giorgio de Chirico), for example, were unclear. In 1920 he represented the Roman gladiators to the bodies if from zameshennogo dough, these pictures are so strange that take them seriously is almost impossible. In tone, they differ little from the fun of the work of German fascism dadaistki Heh Hannah (Hannah Höch), who in his "Rome" (1925) has attached his head to Macho Mussolini slender woman's body in a bathing suit.

With regard to Germany, there is a time when artists like Heh could create similar critical work without fear for their lives, coming to an end. In the Weimar era, they were still able to choose what they do art. But in the same 1925 the art critic Gustav Hartlaub (Gustav Hartlaub) has published an authoritative list, where German modernism has been divided into two categories (with the same number of artists): "right" Classicism and "left" realism. After several years this division has lost all meaning: Hitler came to power, who hated modernism. At the same time, the Fuhrer was impressed classicism as an idea - a cult of perfection, the neglect of emotions ... He even claimed that the Teutons are the direct descendants of the ancient Greeks.

It is the Nazi and fascist classicism - classicism as a political tool - the exhibition ends on top guggenhaymovskoy spiral. Here we see how the repressed into the subconscious memories of World War breaking out as a hallucination of a future war in the sculptures by Georg Kolbe (Georg Kolbe) and Arturo Martini (Arturo Martini): the first cast in bronze nude huge brutal warrior, a second depicted in the image of Athena avenging Valkyrie.

most terrible of all is the work of Adolf Ziegler (Adolf Ziegler)-pictorial triptych with four naked blonde girls personifying the air, fire, earth and water. By itself, the work of an innocent enough - a kitsch Hyperrealism, but the history of its existence keeps a grim detail: this is the triptych of Hitler hanging above their fireplace once was proclaimed leader of the Third Reich.

final chord - an excerpt from the film, Leni Riefenstahl (Leni Riefenstahl)« Olympia, filmed on the eve of World War II (1936-1938). Most of it consists of a smoothly varying frames of ruins of Greek temples of Mount Olympus and the Acropolis, as well as various sculptures. One sculpture - "Discus Thrower" Miron - suddenly comes to life, becoming a German athlete - the Berlin Olympics of 1936. Time - and the mounting method establishes a connection between the time of Pericles, Greece and Nazi Germany.

This screen transformation of both brilliant and ridiculous, it provokes us to acute negative emotions, but not shocking. The only thing you can certainly say thank you to postmodernism - that thanks to him we have ceased to perceive art as something that by definition, expressing the best part of a culture. "Olympia" is admired as an aesthetic monument, and disgust - as a political artifact.

Exhibition Kenneth Silver, meticulous and ruthless, makes us feel the same about many other exhibits - as to more or less "outstanding", and to frankly poor performance. However, towards the end, these differences did not matter. By the time you will not see any items. On the pristine white walls of the Guggenheim - only traces of burns and bloodstains.

Text Holland Kotter (Holland Cotter ), The New York Times
Translation Julie Maksimova, AI

Sources: nytimes.com , artinvestment.ru