Between 1924-1929 in Germany, was often described as the 'Golden Age of Weimar' because of their stability, economic security and improved living standards. Especially when looking back at it from now, and seeing it happened right in between the two traumatized periods, making this period became a flourished one. Germany saw great developments in its overall culture including, cinema, music, theatre, literature, art, architecture, and science.
Expressionism
Expressionism is one of the artistic styles begun before World War I and continued to have a strong influence throughout the 1920s and is broadly defined as the rejection of Western conventions. It is a style that oppose the realism and naturalism, and attempts to portray inner meaning by distorting for emotional effect rather than directly representing natural images. It is a style of painting, music, or drama in which the artist or writer seeks to express emotional experience, not impressions of the external world.
Otto Dix
Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix was a German painter and printmaker born in December 2, 1890. He was mostly noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of Weimar society and the brutality of war. He was initially drawn to Expressionism and Dada, but like many of his generation in Germany in the 1920s, he was inspired by trends in Italy and France to embrace a cold, linear style of drawing and more realistic imagery.
Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden
Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden was one of the well known work by Otto Dix. It was created in 1926 using oil paint and is 1.21 m x 89 cm. In this particular painting, Dix demonstrated the social changes revolved around women and portraying the ‘new women’ looks, or ‘neue frau’ in German. This women in the canvas is smoking, drinking, and is making an ugly grimacing face instead of smiling. She is career oriented, and doesn’t have to care much about marriage or creating a family anymore, which contradicts how women acted before the golden period.
Dadaim
Dada or dadaism is an artistic movement in the early 20th century, which started around World War I. Its purpose was to ridicule the meaninglessness of the world. It took its peak spot in 1916 to 1922 and had influenced other art form such as surrealism and pop art. It favored going against the standards of society and the idea of ridiculing the absurdity of existence to finds its most severe and freaky expression through the dramatic art.
Marcel Duchamps
Henri Robert Marcel Duchamp, born in 28 July 1887, was a painter, sculptor, chess player and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, conceptual art, and Dada. Duchamp's works influenced the development of post-World War I Western art. He advised modern art collectors, such as Peggy Guggenheim and other prominent figures, helping to shape the tastes of Western art during this period. He is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the twentieth century
Fountain
Fountain is one of Duchamp’s most famous and iconic piece of art, often symbolises as the icon of the 20th art. The original piece made in 1917 but was lost, consisted of a standard urinal, and was signed and dated ‘R. Mutt 1917’. There was a replaced new replica in made in 1964 by Tate (an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art).
New Objectivity
The Neue Sachlichkeit (also known as new objectivity) was a movement in German art that arose during the 1920s and executed in a more realistic style as a reaction against Expressionism. The term was made by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, the director of the Kunsthalle in Mannheim, who used it as the title of an art exhibition staged in 1925 to showcase artists who were working in a post-expressionist spirit.
Photo: Den macht uns keiner nach, by George Grosz, drawn in pen 1919
Design and Architecture
In the aftermath of World War I, the architecteral and designs also took a new turn. New buildings were introduced and challenged the traditions of older ones. The design field during the time witnessed some radical departures from styles that had come before it. Their designs are distinctive, and corresponded with modern design. Designers from these movements turned their energy towards a variety of objects, from furniture, to typography, to buildings.
Bauhaus-Style
Staatliches Bauhaus, or Bauhaus was a German art school between 1919 to 1933 designed by Walter Gropius that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicised and taught. It became a leading centre for art and design, but its impact on German architecture was limited because the movement only focused on architecture after 1927 and it was then suppressed by the Nazis in 1933. After that most of the major figures left Germany and fled abroad, where they developed their work further. However, Gropius did design several apartment blocks that are still in use today.
