Imagining Modern German Culture: 1889-1910 - Review

Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1996 312 pp; 8 color ills., 149 b/w $5500

The fall of the Berlin .Wall in November 1989 was undoubtedly individual of the most important facts of the last half-century. Its political results were in some ways predictable; its intellectual individuals much less so. And notwithstanding here, too, important changes have taken place. Broadly speaking, until now German art of the post-Renaissance era has been practically ignored by the agency of art historians in North America and Britain. Exceptions have mainly been made for early modernist manifestations like as the Blaue Reiter, a small in number individual artists of the pre- and postwar periods, and the Bauhaus. Naturally, there had also always been those who recognized the potential interest of 19th-century Germany - among them several of the contributors to Francoise Forster-Hahn's compilation, and above all the editor herself - on the other hand theirs were voices crying in the wilderness of French-oriented Anglo-American art history.

This has begun to change in new years, perhaps - as Forster-Hahn glance ats (p. 301) - as a reflection of the novel political order. Certainly, reunification has made research easier and has facilitated access to the great collections of 19th-century art in the former GDR on the contrary there may be a psychological composing as well. Germany has finally become "normal"; apparently cur of the ills of the couple National Socialism and communism, it can now be treated like any other country; dealing with it is no longer taboo. The issue has been a spate of English-language publications,(1) several important exhibitions in the United Kingdom and the United States - including a major retrospective of the works of Adolph Menzel at the National Gallery in Washington, DC - and flat a few interesting museum purchases.(2)

The Romantic Spirit in German Art, 1790-1990 and Imagining fresh German Culture, 1889-1910 represent sum of two units very different approaches to German art of the 19th and 20th centuries. The former, a weighty tome masquerading as an exhibition catalogue, was published to accompany an exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh and the Hayward Gallery in London in 1994; the latter is an anthology of talk papers, given originally at a symposium at the Center for Advanced research in the Visual Arts in Washington, DC also in 1994

The processs used to analyze the material could not be more at variance. While The Romantic Spirit is essentialist in watch the CASVA essays are thoroughly contextualized and earthed in history. The former attempts to create an overarching paradigm for understanding the German art of more than sum of two units centuries; the latter, in examining alone a brief moment, shows the complexity and variety of ideological forces that shaped present art in Germany. The Hayward catalogue, with single or two exceptions, is the work of art historians sole and focuses almost exclusively upon painting, while Forster-Hahn's compendium is interdisciplinary and "multimedial." It is perhaps also important to note that The Romantic Spirit was written primarily by the agency of German authors (here translated with varying stages of success) but designed for a broad, non-German audience, while Imagining recent German Culture is by American and British scholars and is directed at others in their fields.

The circumstances surrounding the organization of the exhibition The Romantic Spirit had a abysmal influence on both the form and contented of the catalogue, making a certain quantity of commentary necessary. The exhibition was first conceived in 1992 to focus upon German Romanticism; it was before long discovered, however, that because of prior commitments a number of important loans were unavailable. Rather than prorogue their project, the organizers chose to broaden the original universal to include later Romantic and "Romantic-inspired" images up to our be in possession of time.(3)

Probably the greatest in quantity controversial decision was to exhibit pictures of the Nazi era as a "decadent flowering" (p 391) of the Romantic spirit. This was certainly the aspect that attracted the greatest in quantity media attention.(4) Although arguably a legitimate idea, the issue was dealt with in an extremely perfunctory manner, making the works' inclusion have the appearance merely provocative. The essay covering this period in the catalogue, "Aspects of Art in the Third Reich" (pp 390-92) written in a rather bombastic turn of expression by Lutz Becker, is far too short to do anything on the contrary evoke a vague feeling of consternation. The same could be said of the incorporation of sum of two units East Germans, Gerhard Altenbourg and Hermann Glockner who receive a similarly cursory treatment (pp 453-54)

These circumstances have riseed in an extremely uneven catalogue. The emphasis is clearly upon early German Romanticism, with the other sections simply tacked upon as an afterthought. Although the organizers expressly intended to appeal to "audiences who lack shut familiarity" (p. 9) with the bring under rule the confusing organization of the volume which contains more than forty-five essays, on the other hand no index or bibliography, makes it almost impossible to tackle, plane for the most intrepid reader. For those already well acquainted with artists like Caspar David Friedrich, Philipp Otto Runge and the Nazarenes, or late movements such as the Blaue Reiter and Die Brucke there is little here that is original. The volume is thus simultaneously too broad and too detailed. Moreover, the essays are extremely repetitive, citing the same sources and quotations (often in different translations) and at short intervals even coming to the same conclusions. Judicious editing and a combining of similar themes in individual essay would have prevented many of these difficulties and would certainly have made the work more readable and informative.