Constellations: HAA 2451 Art in the Weimar Republic
This course traces the political history of the visual arts in Germany during the interwar years of the Weimar Republic (1918-1932). In the wake of World War I and the fall of the German monarchy in 1918, modernist artists and architects received unprecedented support from the new Republican government in what has been described as a veritable Golden Age of vanguard experiment in painting, architecture, theater, and film. Such developments took place, however, amidst rising fascism, militarism, and the specter of a second world war. Weekly lectures will address the place of the arts in Germany's increasingly politicized culture of conflict during this period, which culminated in Hitler's rise to power in 1933. The politically dissident work of George Grosz and John Heartfield will be considered alongside the socially ambitious building and design programs of Walter Gropius's Bauhaus, the pacifist art of Otto Dix and Kathe Kollwitz, and Hannah Hoch's and Christian Schad's artistic critique of gender roles.
