January 25, 2007

Considering art's response to war

This winter the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art will explore artistic responses to World War I and the ensuing social unrest of the early Weimar Republic in the Main Gallery exhibition “From the Trenches to the Street: Art from Germany, 1910s–1920s” (through March 18).

The exhibition — one of four new exhibitions opening in January 2007 — will feature prints, drawings and paintings by renowned German artists, including George Grosz, Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Conrad Felixmüller, Käthe Kollwitz and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff.

Drawing from the Block’s own collection and from other public and private collections in the Midwest, “From the Trenches to the Street” includes examples of government-sponsored portrayals of soldiers and battles, anti-war works, depictions of the declining social conditions in postwar Germany, and portraiture, which emerged as a challenge to the vast anonymity of death and the subsuming of individuality experienced during the time.

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To complement this exhibition, the Block will exhibit a selection of prints created by the famed German artist Lovis Corinth. Corinth’s work manifests a nervous energy that reflects the volatile times in which he lived. However, in contrast to his younger contemporaries who directly addressed the trauma of war or urban chaos, Corinth increasingly turned to traditional subject matter in the final years of his life. “Lovis Corinth: Weimar Period Prints” (through March 18) in the museum’s Print, Drawing and Photography Study Center, will include some of Corinth’s self-portraits alongside prints with biblical, mythological and historical themes.

The Dada movement was also born out of World War I, its rejection of reason and logic a deliberate reaction to authority. Dada embraced nonsense, irrationality and spontaneity in a range of art forms, including the then relatively new medium of film. In the Ellen Philips Katz and Howard C. Katz Gallery, the Block will present “Nonsense and Experimentation: Dada Film Shorts” (through March 18), a diverse selection of experimental films by artists Viking Eggeling, Man Ray, Hans Richter and Marcel Duchamp.

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Born in Germany between the two World Wars, Wolfgang Gäfgen, who now lives in Paris, creates highly detailed, richly textured depictions of everyday, familiar objects such as drapery, jackets and suitcases. Working primarily in the laborious technique of mezzotint, Gäfgen creates masterful prints with lush surfaces and tonalities. The recognizable subjects on view in the Alsdorf Gallery exhibition “Wolfgang Gäfgen: Portfolios” (through March 18) are treated as abstract forms so they appear detached from a particular place, time or nationality. In contrast to other works on display at the Block this winter, Gäfgen’s approach represents a post-World War II interest in abstraction and an international perspective.

Weekend tours of the Block Museum’s winter exhibitions will be offered at 2 p.m. every Saturday and Sunday from Jan. 30 through March 18.