Looking at Interwar Europe Through the Artist’s Lens

Unlike many exhibits at the Guggenheim Museum, “Foto: Modernity in Central Europe from 1918 to 1945” is filled with obscure artists from a seldom artistically recognized region and medium. While the Dada movement as a whole has been thoroughly appreciated, most recently and memorably in a comprehensive MoMA show last summer, many of the photographic greats of Central Europe have been less celebrated than the multimedia and “ready-made” artists of Western Europe.

This alone should be enough motivation to take a break from work, take a walk through Central Park, and discover the intense period of avant-garde inventiveness that took place in interwar Central Europe.

Emerging from the devastation of World War One, many Central Europeans turned to photography as a means of creative and often highly political artistic expression.

Although designated as a photography exhibit, around half of the works in “Foto” use the photomontage technique—a term coined in Russia in 1923. One such piece, “Heads of State” by German Dadaist Hannah Hoch, contains cutout photos of Friedrich Ebert, the then-president of Weimar Germany, posing in a bathing suit alongside his similarly clad defense minister. The photograph from which these images were cut was originally published in a Berlin weekly in 1919, but Hoch places the two beer-bellied politicians in a new and provocative background. Surrounded by exotic plants, butterflies and even a mermaid, Hoch sets them in a mock paradise. Very politically conscious—and at the same time entertaining—this photomontage is only one example of the multi-faceted works on display.

The majority of works shown here actually are not classified as part of the familiar Dada and Bauhaus interwar movements. The exhibit includes a series of photographs by Czech and Polish artists inspired by the concurrent French surrealist movement that present Prague as a Parisian rival for the world’s center of surrealist activity.

Appropriately for their time, many of the photographs deal with industrialization, featuring construction sites, high voltage lines, and factories along with portraits of those who worked in them. Despite focusing on a what may seem like a fairly unaesthetically pleasing subject, some of the photographs manage to show a certain beauty in machinery. Albert Renger-Patzsch’s 1921 “Still Life With Tools” crosses fine art with industrial manufacturing. Other photographers show the harsh brutality of working conditions.

Other photographs magnificently demonstrate the curious mix of modernity and nationalism that developed in the new nation-states formed by the destruction of the German, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian empires. Milos Dohnany’s 1934 photograph “Building the Cervena Skala-Margecany Railway Line” shows Czechoslovakian peasant women in traditional garb working to build a new railroad, illustrating the interaction between tradition and industrial modernity.

Another section of the exhibit focuses on the concept of the “New Woman,” who often entered roles in the interwar period that were previously reserved for men. “Klaus and Erika Mann,” by Lotte Jacobi, shows a young couple dressed in identical workplace uniforms, making their genders almost completely ambiguous. Otto Umbehr’s “Dreamers” is a black and white photograph of the heads of female mannequins cramped together in a claustrophobic space, questioning the supposed liberation of the New Woman.

There are only a few photos from World War II, but one of them is so poignant that it alone could represent the era. In “Souvenir, Springtime in Poland” from 1947, Czech photographer Jindrich Marco captures a horrific scene. Two men pose in front of a canvas showing lush green hills and a beautiful landscape. Behind the canvas is another landscape, the polar opposite of the first. One can see the complete destruction and devastation of postwar Poland. This is the last photograph in the exhibit, but it is an image that will stay with the viewer forever.

If you go to the Guggenheim to see the centerpiece on Richard Prince, it is easy to miss this much smaller exhibit nestled in a two-room gallery on the fourth floor. As both exhibits end in January and admission is free with a Columbia University ID, it is worthwhile to make two separate trips. There is certainly enough material in the Central European exhibit alone to fill the whole Guggenheim, and spending a couple of hours in these two rooms may be more valuable than doing your weekly history readings.