New Objectivity - 927

Narrator (m) (Zitat):

“For today’s painters, the still life represents above all the strictest commitment to form with an almost radical exclusion of expression conditioned by the object. It is the necessary counterblow to Expressionism …. It may be that today’s still life lacks poetry, but the new quality of the still life is better than all dubious poetry in our unpoetic time: its objectivity,”

Narrator (f):

observed K. R. Ruppel in his article “Die Auferstehung des Stillebens” (The Resurrection of the Still Life), published in 1925. He was identifying a phenomenon that would dominate the painting of New Objectivity, since the still life became its main genre next to the human image. The highest precision, fidelity to details, clarification of the constructive elements, and isolation of individual objects became the formal characteristics of this art movement.

Narrator (m):

Painting competed with photography but also exchanged with it. As related as their motifs and perspectives were in some cases, painters had many more possibilities in terms of spatial effect and the design of light and surfaces. They looked at everyday objects, technical devices, vessels, plants, and animals. There were also still lifes with toys, dolls, and masks as well as still lifes in the studio.

Narrator (f):

A basic sense of melancholy that can be defined as the mood of an era was conveyed by the coolness and precision of the depiction but also by the poverty of the objects selected. Unusual perspectives from an angle, from below, or from close up and the meeting of proximity and distance in the motifs or perplexing scale relationships spoke of a latent insecurity that contrasted with the static quality of the usually linear structure of the composition.

Narrator (m):

Alexander Kanoldt can be considered a master of the New Objective still life. He was represented with eight works in this genre in the historical exhibition of the Kunsthalle Mannheim in 1925. In Still Life XI from 1920, he depicts a detail of his overfilled desk with brushes, containers, pens, ink, and papers.  Whereas there he was working with staggering height and depth, five years later in Still Life IV, which could be seen in Mannheim in 1925, expands only to the sides, not in depth.  The objects are placed one behind the other in the tiniest space.