New Objectivity - 913

Narrator (f):

The world of fashion in particular offered women an opportunity to live out new role models; at the same, it opened up new professional opportunities for them. An entire industry resulted that employed women designers and fashion illustrators, seamstresses, fashion journalists and photographers. The boom in the new mass media also helped create jobs, and the cinema also shaped the image of the modern woman. Fashion played a mediating role between individuality and uniformity. This can be seen using the example of artist-designed mannequins. They occupy an interim position between applied and fine art.

Narrator (m):

The portraits of New Objectivity and contemporary mannequins for store windows had notable similarities. First, an intense preoccupation with human variety. In both paintings and store windows, we encounter the girl, the lady, the femme fatale, the gentleman, the gigolo, and the hoodlum but also the technoid, mechanical person. Diverse body sizes and ages, African- or Asian-looking faces, and extreme facial expressions were commonplace for several years. Paintings and sculptures moved between realism, stylization, and typification.

Narrator (f):

In addition, both New Objectivity and window dressing were equally concerned with the “genuine” and the “artificial,” with the “original” and the “mock-up,” and with the “animate” and the “inanimate.” The milliner’s heads exhibited here are from the collection of Wolfgang Knapp – Kulturgut, Mannheim.