This comment was written by HAVC 135B on 2 Sep 2016.
How did the political imperatives of Dada and of some Neue Sachlichkeit artworks and photography replace the experimental ones of Expressionism?
This description of an ‘unacclimated social paradigm’ holds true not only for the agency of Dada and Neue Sachlichkeit, but adequately characterizes the Weimar polity as a whole. The nativity of Germany’s first democratic state was complicated by an embittered and militaristic Right and proactive and revolutionary Left—crudely put, the failure of the Spartacus Revolution inhibited the Left while the dissolve of monarchical sovereignty aggravated the Right.
By the foundation of Weimar Germany, Expressionism was at an undeniable impasse—unable to capture the ethos of the new generation.
- Summer 2016