This is the continuation of an account of my recent visit to the Neue Galerie.
After spending some time with the permanent collection, I made my way up to the top floor for the museum's special exhibition devoted to Portraits of an Age: Photography in Germany and Austria, 1930-1938.
Marta Astfalck-Netz's Self Portrait with Mask (1930), a superbly executed gelatin silver print, made a nice introduction to some of the larger themes of the show, which sought to capture a precise moment in the intersection between classical representation, new approaches using photographic means, and the transformative effect of early cinematography (esp. the necessity of silent film actors to convey intense emotion visually). Swathed in brocade and lace and glittery costume jewellery, the artist touches each of her shoulders with the corresponding hand.
A 1928 portrait of Max Beckmann easily translated into a single expression the intense feeling and dark emotion he distilled into his body of expressionist work, but all I could think was, How on earth did he ever live in Saint Louis? My favorite depiction of him, however, will always be his own self-portrait in tuxedo, cigarette in hand, that I saw in Paris at the Centre Pompidou as part of his retrospective there and then was delighted to encounter the painting at Harvard University's Busch-Reisinger Museum.
An off-center snapshot of badass Bauhausienne Lucia Moholy, taken by Florence Henry in 1927, with her sharp fringe of bangs, smudged eyeliner, single dangling black plastic-looking earring, black-and-white striped shirt collar just visible at the bottom of the frame, and nihilistic gaze, could easily have been taken fifty years later at the height of Punk with little question of its authenticity.
One of the things I really like about art of this period is how frequently imagery of seemingly strong, creative, independent women who are not necessarily valued only for aesthetic purposes crops up. An excellent example is a photograph of Maud Thyssen, Race Car Driver (1934), by Marianne Breslauer. She is simply stunning in her old-fashioned cap (with earflaps, it looks as though it would be more suited to flying an early airplane, but I guess that all fast things sort of fell into one general category with one general wardrobe to suit them then), scarf, and coat (big buttons, very Marc Jacobs), posed confidently in profile with her face firmly pressed to the future.
In the next gallery, the text noted that, "Female photographers were instrumental in shaping the image of the new woman, which included erotic aspects that had previously been taboo." Besides that entire section of gorgeously lush imagery, where I lingered for a while (think: intense gazes, bobbed hair, drape-y embroidered robes and quite a lot of masks), I also enjoyed both candid and formal shots of several key artists of the era that were sprinkled throughout the show: Moholy-Nagy, Kandinsky, Shiele, Klimt, the afore-mentioned Beckmann, and so on.
The last image I remember standing out in my mind is Hugo Erforth's photograph (1906) of Harry Graf Kressler, "diplomat and art patron," looking as cool as they come, dressed in formal wear and sporting a fashionably fine turn of the century 'stache, frozen as though in the midst of knowing conversation. Indeed, the entire exhibition was like an elegant cocktail party, unsuspectingly and forever suspended in a block of ice.
Portraits of an Age opens at the Albertina in Vienna on July 1 and remains on display there until October.
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