Looking Inside

George Grosz painted Inside and Outside in 1926, a time in his career when he

was still actively engaged in leftist political agitation in Germany. The message of this

painting, like most of his political art, is simple and direct. The “outside” represents the

desolate world of the oppressed lower class, whereas the “inside” displays the luxury

enjoyed by the upper class. The purpose of art, for Grosz, was to expose societal

inequality. He sought to portray “brutal reality,” a reality of injustice and exploitation

that is usually hidden from the masses. Combining avant-garde formal techniques with

traditional naturalism, Grosz tried to achieve the most accurate and transparent rendering

of this social reality.

Grosz’s radicalism can be traced back to the German war of 1914-18. The war

dramatically changed Grosz from an innocuous artist cultivated in the academy into an

active political revolutionary. After witnessing the horrors of the war, he began to

develop the devout moral purpose that transformed him into a critical artist, charged with

the mission of instructing the German people. During the chaotic interwar period of the

Weimar Republic, high unemployment, the burden of reparation repayment, and

hyperinflation left scores of Germans in a state of penury. Hitler gained power and

started building up nationalistic sentiment, expanding the military, and repressing wages

and workers’ organizations. Throughout this period and up till WWII, when he fled

Germany for America, Grosz engaged in revolutionary activities to champion the causes

of the proletariat and to challenge belligerent nationalism and militarism. He joined the

German Communist Party (KPD) in 1918 and becomes president over the “Red Group”,

the first formal organization of KPD artists in 1924.

 By designing posters, placards, leaflets, and newspaper contributions, Grosz

drew to serve the needs of politics. He criticized ideas that the artist is somehow above

the concerns of society or that works of art are sacred or transcendent. All art is engaged

in the current political concerns of the age. The production of art, like any other

industrial trade, is determined by the material circumstances that surround it. Any art that

claims to be neutral or unrelated automatically serves to maintain the status quo.

Revolutionary art, on the other hand, engages in the present-day conflicts of the working

class man or woman by destabilizing dominant bourgeois modes of thought. Early on,

Grosz became involved with the Berlin Dadaist movement, which sought to undermine

the logical, efficient functioning of society through art. The influence of the Dadaist

technique of photomontage, which Grosz helped develop, is apparent in Inside and

Outside’s juxtaposition of disparate images. A Dadaist manifesto co-written by him

asserted the greater purpose of this kind of work: “The highest art is one that manifests in

its consciousness the countless problems of the present day, that seems to have risen out

of the explosions of the previous week, and that takes its form from immediate contact

with the conflicts of the present.”1 The manifesto declared the “feverish interrelatedness

of everything”2, thus burying formalist notions of art’s autonomy. There is no “art for

art’s sake,” only art for politics’ sake.

In this manifesto, Grosz also launched attacks on German Expressionism:

“Expressionist artists and writers have grouped together into a generation which is

already looking longingly for literary and artistic esteem and honourable recognition

from the bourgeoisie. Under the pretext of propagating spiritual values they have

1
George Grosz and Richard Huelsenbeck, “Dadaistisches Manifest,” translated by Mary Kay Flavell,
George Grosz, a Biography (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 307.
2
“Dadaistisches Manifest,” 308.

2
retreated, in their struggles against Naturalism, into a set of abstract and sentimental

postures which are based on a life which is cozy but devoid of content and action.”3

Grosz charged that the Expressionists, who often depicted the virtues of traditional

German rural life, were guilty of retreating into a romantic, idealized world that remained

completely disconnected from reality. In opposition to these contrived notions of

essentialist beauty, Grosz sketched the ugly aspects of German society. Unwilling to

content himself with drawing whitewashed illusions, he served as a muckraker by

digging up the real, material corruption within Germany. But even though Grosz rejected

Expressionism, its formal techniques found its way into his works. Grosz sought to

render “reality,” but his version of reality was radically different from the visual

correctness of “realistic” paintings in the Classical or Renaissance tradition. He wanted

to capture social realities, which usually involved the artistic distortion of recognizable

motifs.

Grosz’s attempts to render an alternate reality are reminiscent of the Surrealists’

works and their interpretation of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory and Marx’s writings on

capitalist society. Surrealist artists, who also made frequent use of montages to achieve

defamiliarizing effects, criticized the bias towards representing conscious reality at the

expense of ignoring our unconscious existence. The conscious mind masks our

unconscious to deny its existence. Similarly, Marx pointed out that capitalist society

hides the contradictions and evils within society to blind the masses to the reality of their

exploitation. Grosz’s work, like that of the Surrealists, were aimed at unearthing the

dark, repressed, and disgusting deeper reality buried within the (social) subconscious.

3
“Dadaistisches Manifest,” 307.

3
 Thus, art is a penetrating vision that pierces through dominant deceptions. This

view of art’s role is the most obvious motif of Inside and Outside. Here, the artist’s

painting pierces through a brick wall to reveal the corrupt insides of society. Inside and

Outside draws a clear and incriminating connection between the visible plight of the

lower class on the outside, and the hidden gluttony and selfishness of the upper class

inside. Grosz was “hoping to kill [the essential villainy] by bringing it into the open.”4

Drawing off a Freudian idea, Grosz also revealed repressed sexual desire by rendering the

outside lady’s dress transparent, thus displaying her buttocks. Accompanying her is a

bourgeois man, whose body language suggests sexual intentions. The man’s left arm is

wrapped around her waist, his right arm is animated, and his shoulders are shrugged in a

guilty pose. It looks as if he is telling her a secret or suggesting something mischievous.

She may be a prostitute, since prostitution, which involves men’s exploitation of women,

is a common Grosz metaphor for the rich’s exploitation of the poor. Both forms of abuse

are results of a system of rapacious greed, in which both women and workers are treated

as objects to be used rather than as people. Because the painting is an attempt to expose

this system, the lady’s transparent dress not only implies her commodification, but also

suggests that the artist is trying to “strip naked” the realities of society for us to see.

Another function of these two well-dressed figures on the outside is to

emphasize class distinctions. The only faces we see on the outside is a war cripple trying

to sell some matches and what appears to be a working class man. Both of them are in

the foreground. The bourgeois couple, on the other hand, is in the background and is

walking away from the viewer. Since their backs are turned towards us, we cannot see

4
Hans Hess, introduction to Drawings and Watercolors by George Grosz (Beverly Hills, CA: Paul Kantor
Gallery, 1964).

4
their faces. What they are saying and doing is hidden from us; it is on the “inside.” The

implication that they are about to engage in debauched behavior is knowable to us only

because Grosz rendered her dress transparent.

This division between rich and poor is the theme of the entire painting as a

whole; the juxtaposition of different classes reveals society’s underlying inequality. The

lower class has no access to the well-dressed couple’s secrets – to the inside. Separating

the two classes is a brick wall. In notes written after this painting was composed, Grosz

expresses his enmity towards the image of the wall: “I felt oppositions in society, like

bleeding, gaping wounds, and even after the war had finished I saw brutality and horror...

I often felt like a wall, giving off a bloody, dehumanized echo of the surrounding world.

A wall onto which this present age engraved some of its ghostly and grotesque faces.”5

The wall is indeed surrounded by grotesque faces. The working man, rendered almost

without dimensions in a wan monochrome, passes by like a ghost, and the cripple looks

more like a skeleton than a live person. The oppositions of society on either side of the

wall are stark. While the cripple leans against the hard brick wall, the wall of the inside

is a soft, smooth, sky blue. Whereas the inside is detailed and elaborate, the outside is

rough, sketchy, and blurry. Its cold drab tones contrasts with the inside’s range of hot

flashy colors. The outside is actually narrower, taking up a significantly smaller

proportion of the painting than the inside. Thus, the outside is marginalized in every

sense.

Inside, a bourgeois man celebrates his birthday. The strong complementary

colors of green and red, with the green leaves and ribbon against a bright red curtain, set

a festive tone. Just like the outside bourgeois man, whose folds of fat are constrained
5
George Grosz, “Notes for My Trial,” 3 December 1930, published in Flavell, 314.

5
only by his belt, fat droops out of the birthday man’s tuxedo collar to stress his excess of

consumption. The vision-enhancing eyeglasses and monocle worn by two of the inside

men draw attention to another form of bourgeois consumption – sight. The birthday man

appears to be greedily gazing outside but the outside people cannot see inside; he

symbolically devours and exploits the working class to support his gluttonous lifestyle.

The woman on the outside is also the subject of a consumptive male gaze due to the

exposure of her buttocks. Furthermore, the eyeglasses and monocle indicate the middle

class’ artificiality. While the sun supplies light outside, a lamp lights the inside. All the

inside characters strike stiff, sterile poses. In the background, an enormous centrally

positioned man is surrounded by two obsequious women, one of whom preens herself by

adjusting her pearl necklace. The man on the right is just as dainty and affected as the

women. His tongue curls out licentiously, and he holds a cigarette in one hand and liquor

in the other. Debauchery, excessive consumption, and artificiality pervade the inside.

The inside’s table tilts towards the viewer. Though the rest of the scene

suggests that we are supposed to see the table’s side, it looks as if we are looking down at

the table from above. Grosz frequently used tilting planes and contradictory perspectives

to “produce a visual chaos clearly intended as an equivalent for the social and moral

chaos” of modern society.6 Here, the table is tilted to display all the items on top,

showing us the birthday man’s commodities. These items range widely from the cold

blue pale of ice on one side of the table to the hot lamp on the other side, whose yellow

heat is enhanced by the red lampshade. Also on the table is a box of cigars, a champagne

glass, an ashtray, and a noisemaker. The noisemaker enhances the sense that the inside is

6
Briony Fer, David Batchelor, and Paul Wood, Realism, Rationalism, and Surrealism (New Haven &
London: Yale University Press, 1993), 285.

6
loud and boisterous, in agreement with the overall impression of excess and self-

indulgence. A birthday itself is a consumerized festival involving the accumulation of

excessive commodities. In this painting, the “inside,” the heart or core of society, is

rapaciously corrupt, rotten, and depraved.

This kind of symbolic meaning pervades Inside and Outside. Significantly, the

war veteran and working class man of the outside are on the “left” of the painting,

whereas the bourgeois of the inside are on the “right” of the painting. Grosz thus

synchronizes the classes of the painting with the political alignment most suited to them.

Grosz, as a radical liberal, supported the oppressed people portrayed on the left, and the

conservative bourgeois are placed on the right. In addition, each of the characters is an

allegory for whole groups within society. As stated before, the outside people are the

lower class whereas the inside people are the upper class. There are also individual

“types” that are found throughout German society and Grosz’s paintings: the war cripple,

the working class man, the affluent bourgeois man, and the frivolous bourgeois woman.

In Inside and Outside, the contrast between the birthday man and the war

cripple is stark. The birthday man wears a stiff, spruce suit whereas the cripple’s clothes,

which are just as wrinkled as his skin, have torn and jagged edges. The war cripple’s

hands are bony and gnarled and his face looks shriveled and shrunken while the birthday

man’s hands and face are pudgy and bloated. The imbalance between these two

characters are remarkable; one is huge and robust, the other is old and worn down.

The contrast between the birthday man and working class man is just as harsh.

The birthday man has huge eyes with bright white cornea, a large imposing nose, and

robust ruddy cheeks. Green and red ribbons adorn him and a large fat cigar juts out from

7
his mouth. His thick protruding lips suggest lewd sensuality, emphasizing his corruption

and moral depravity. As opposed to the working class man’s monochrome two-

dimensionality, the modeling of the birthday man’s suit is so exaggerated that color of the

suit ranges from black to white. The birthday man’s features are large and imposing, and

he exudes a strong, fat, obnoxious presence.

The working class man, on the other hand, is both modestly dressed and

modestly painted. As opposed to the birthday man’s exaggerated three-dimensionality, he

is a two-dimensional figure rendered in a uniformly dull, purplish gray. His features are

barely noticeable, delineated only by faint outlines. Overall, he is indistinct and

unworthy of attention. The working class man’s expression is downcast, wrinkles and

bags droop around his eyes, and a cigarette hangs feebly from his mouth. His lowered

head and closed eyes suggest reluctance against facing the outside’s harsh sad reality with

all its attendant ugliness. Outside, the lady’s fur coat and the barren leafless trees suggest

a cold season. To deal with the inhospitable environment, the working class man’s coat is

buttoned and his fists are tightly clenched. It is uncertain how he will respond to the

cripple, who he about to pass; his averted gaze and defensively closed fists suggest that

he is trying to ignore him. The stoicism of the working class man stands in severe

opposition to the excessive overindulgence of the bourgeoisie. Whereas the birthday

man’s eyes are wide open, devouring all the rich colors around him, the working class

man closes his eyes to block out the hardships of his world.

However, it should be noted that the war cripple and working class man are not

idealized. The war cripple is still hideous, and the working class man looks

unsympathetic to the cripple’s plight. In 1925, a year before this painting, Grosz was

8
criticized by the KPD for failing to render the working class in more positive terms.

Grosz’s responded, “I... do not consider it necessary to satisfy the demands of a

‘Hurrah’-shouting Bolshevism which images the working man with his hair neatly

combed and dressed up in archaic heroic costume.”7 Prior to this rift with the KPD,

Grosz’s commitment to “realism” won him many conservative enemies. Compared to

some of his other works, his portrayal of the bourgeois in Inside and Outside is rather

lenient. Works that portrayed bourgeois figures engaged in violent and sexually explicit

acts often landed him in court with charges of distributing obscene materials. In his

defense, he says, “As a realist, I prefer to use my pen and brush primarily to put down

what I see and observe; and this is generally unromantic, sober and far from idyllic.8

George Grosz cannot be called a realist in the traditional sense of visual

accuracy, since his lurid cynicism bleeds into his work to result in glaring distortions. He

says, “The last century laid a great deal of emphasis on the outer world of reality but

neglected the inner world.” 9 However, his quest to reach beyond the visual surface never

involves a complete abandonment of recognizable figuration. He warns, “Abstract

fancy… is as much to be shunned by the artist as the slavish copying of nature.”10

Though Grosz’s work exhibits the influence of numerous avant-garde movements, he is

an avant-garde artist in political rather than formal artistic terms. His art compromises

between realism and abstraction to serve the ultimate role of composing a visually legible

but critical rendition of social and political circumstances.

7
George Grosz, “My Life,” first published in Prozektor 14 (Moscow, 1928), 153. Translated by Mary Kay
Flavell, George Grosz, a Biography (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 312.
8
Preface to Uber alles die Liebe, 1930, tr. by Mary Kay Flavell, George Grosz, a Biography (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 312.
9
George Grosz, “On my Drawings,” George Grosz (London: Peter Owen, 1954), 30.
10
“On my Drawings”, 31.

9
 Works Consulted

Fer, Briony, David Batchelor, and Paul Wood. Realism, Rationalism, and Surrealism.
New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1993.

Flavell, Mary Kay. George Grosz, a Biography. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1988.

Grosz, George. Drawings and Watercolors by George Grosz. Beverly Hills, CA: Paul
Kantor Gallery, 1964.

Grosz, George. “On my Drawings,” George Grosz. London: Peter Owen, 1954.

McCloskey, Barbara. George Grosz and the Communist Party. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1997.

10
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
 Realism, Rationalism, and Surrealism textbook, pages 41-42, 284-297, 314
 George Grosz, M. Kay Flavell, 1988, Yale University Press, New Haven & London
 Author:, Grosz, George, 1893-1959.; Title:, Drawings and watercolors by George Grosz :
[catalogue of an exhibition held from] June 1-June 26, 1964 [at the] Paul Kantor Gallery, Beverly
Hills, California.; introduction by Hans Hess
 Barbara McCloskey, George Grosz and the Communist Party (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1997). stopped on top of p. 128
 Misc bibliography mess
 'Dadaistisches Manifest, (Dadist Manifesto), 1918 (with Richard Huelsenbeck et al.): Schneede,
(2) pp. 20-2 (Schneede, DIE SWANZIGER JAHRE, pp. 20-2) tr. KF
 hurrah-bolshevism stuff from here: My Life, 1928 Schneed, p. 153. First published in Prozektor
14, (Moscow, 1928), tr. KF.
 Love Above All: preface to U(2 dots)ber alles die Liebe, 1930, tr. KF
 from My Life. Notes for my Trial, 3 December 1930. Unpublished typescript in GAH, tr. KF.
GAH = Grosz Archive, Houghton Library, Harvard University. letters and diaries.
 Notes from George Grosz Teaching 1934. These notes, which reproduce Grosz's comments in
class or notes on the back of student drawings, were compiled by Jent Moor in 1934-1945.
Unpublished notes in GAH.
Communist party was losing elections. KPD's number of depudies dropped form 62 to 45 in 1924.
"If you're a Dadaist, you should be opposed to this manifesto!" (from a manifesto signed by him, Flavell,
308)
 Out of opposition to the military scare campaign against Britain and intellectual affinity to the
USA, he anglicized his name, which confirmed his anti-nationalist attitude. (Grove)
 "In his polemical writings of the early 1920s, Grosz had frequently insisted on the utter
irrelevance of issues of quality and distinctions between art and propaganda.
the Berlin Dada movement, which he joined in 1918 (see Dada, §4). In 1920, with Heartfield and Otto Dix,
he took part in the Erste Internationale Dada-Messe. As well as developing the technique of Photomontage,
(Grove)
 adopted by the gallery of Alfred Flechtheim in 1925. However, his attitude towards the class struggle
was thereby blunted.
"In 1926, Grosz became a director of a Society for Politics, Science, and the Arts, known as the 1926
Club."
Art became the vehicle of his pessimistic world view, reflecting a ruined world that manifested itself most
trenchantly in the big city and its excesses. (Grove)
 "Down with the bloodless abstractions of Expressionism! Down with the utopian theories of
literary twits!"11
 "a psychological use of x-ray transparency" (Hess)
 In his art he fought against preoccupations of Wilhelmine society by uncovering their shadowy
aspects of crime, murder and erotic license. (Grove)
The sexual murder became a prominent motif, in which the combination of sexuality and violence was
presented as a ritualization of the human quest for power, exemplified by political practice. (Grove).
 “contradictory grammars (massively receding perspective AND overlapping planes; stylization
AND still legible figuration) produce a visual chaos clearly intended as an equivalent for the social

11
George Grosz and Richard Huelsenbeck, “Dadaistisches Manifest,” translated by Mary Kay Flavell,
George Grosz, a Biography (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 308.

11
 and moral chaos of the modern city itself” (285). “tilting planes, the sharp diagonals, the abrupt
changes of scale and the hurrying figures” “overlapping planes and dynamic ‘lines of force’”
(textbook, 285)
 TENSION W/COMMUNIST PARTY
 Grosz's growing pessimism about the masses. . awareness of the growth of fascism, and his belief
that communism subscribed to an unrealistic psychology of mass behaviour (it couldn't be done).
the masses were gradually being swung to the right. "hurra-bolshevism", no point in presenting a
sentimental, idealized view of the proletariat.
 response to complaints about his representation of workers :"I... do not consider it necessary to
satisfy the demands of a 'Hurrah'-shouting Bolshevism which images the working man with his
hair neatly combed and dressed up in archaic heroic costume... I absolutely reject the idea that one
can only serve the cause of propaganda by producing a onesided, flattering and false idealization
of life... The task of art is the help the worker understand his exploitation and his suffering, to
compel him to acknowledge openly his wretchedness and enslavement, to awaken self-
consciousness in him and to inspire him to engage in class warfare."12 (Flavell, 312)
 Kurt Tucholsky's letters in 1925. criticism of the quality of satire in Der Knuppel (u with two dots
on top) Tucholsky asked "Why aren't you simply more naturalistic?... Because people instinctively
realized that a contrived satire is complete nonsense."13
 1925- criticism of Grosz's less-than-ideal portrayal of the proletariat at the Tenth Party Congress of
the KPD in July 1925, the KPD leveled criticism at Der Knuppel. elitist and ineffective, more
involved in producing art than political agitation "overintellectualization and failure to connect
with the heroism of the class struggle"
 use of satire was controversial, since satire had become a popular bourgeois thing
 Grosz's growing status in the established German art world. Grosz coopted, or subsumed into the
establishment, neutralized.
 CENSORSHIP DUE TO HIS DISGUSTING REALISM:
 On 16 Gebruary 1924, Grosz stood trial once again, this time on charges of 'distributing obscene
materials'" (106) Ecce Homo. "bourgeois figures with fleshy, misshapen bodies and scarred and
blemished faces engage in a variety of explicit sexual acts. Thin and downtrodden workers,
sailors, and war cripples, who appear in several of the images, occupy a peripheral role to the
central thematic concern of bourgeois sexual indulgence." (McCloskey, 206)
 the presiding judge "found Grosz's work too naturalistic in detail and lacking in the appropriate
aesthetic distancing and artistic quality that would make such images acceptable for public
distribution." (McCloskey, 107-108)
 he ended up being fined 500 marks and his paintings were banned and confiscated
 PESSIMISM
 The war made Grosz into a misanthropist and a Utopian (Grove)
 In 1918 he listed the qualities that he wished his art to possess: 'Hardness, brutality, clarity
that hurts! There's enough soporific music.' (Grove)
 cynicism, satire, caricature, “hedonistic and hostile”, rotten society, lurid
 emotionless, unsentimental, distanced, alienated
 grotesque, ugly, unattractive
 "As a realist, I prefer to use my pen and brush primarily to put down what I see and observe;
and this is generally unromantic, sober and far from idyllic. (paragraph break) Heaven knows
why it's so, but when you look closely, people and objects can easily become inadeequate,
ugly, and often meaningless or ambiguous... So when I put down my graphic signs; they are
sober and without any mystery."14 (Love Above All, Flavell, 312)

12
“My Life,” 312.
13
Kurt Tocholsky, Ausgewa(2 dots)hlte Briefe, 1913-1925, eds. Mary Gerold-Tucholsky and Fritz J.
Raddatz (Frankfurt am Main: Rowohlt), 166.
14
Preface to Uber alles die Liebe, 1930, tr. by Mary Kay Flavell, George Grosz, a Biography (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 312.

12
  But these types recognized themselves in the mirror of his art... He had at last shown their
faces as they were. What writers and orators wrote and said he made visible, and it was not a
pleasant sight... George Grosz is a satirist not a caricaturist... Lust, greed, hate, drink and
sexual perversions are only the other side of 'normal' life. Periods of reaction, Lenin had said,
are periods of pornography... Grosz painted society and its pillars naked and unadorned."
 straightforwardness of the picture important. abstraction wouldn’t have been as good propaganda?
 though, he saw it not so much as a "marching forward" but an attempt to stop society's backward slide
into the chaos of WWII.
 retrograde formal means. not the most innovative formally- political rather than formal avante-garde.
 REALISM
 REPRESENTATION
 allegory as opposed to realism
 “revealing the UNDERLYING truth rather than the superficiality of appearance… artists
could legitimately go beyond an academic naturalism.” (294)
 “Grosz is usually seen as the central figure in the Weimar debates about artistic realism.”
(284)
 "A picture could be made with some part impressionistic, and some part realistic, and some
part abstract. No one has made much experiment in this direction. Here is something to be
done."15
 surrealism: "Paint not so much with the conscious; paint sometimes with the unconscious."16
 "In fact it is almost everywhere if you can penetrate deeply enough beneath the husk of
things. For, after all, nature is not simply the sum total of animate and inanimate objects.
There is more to a tree or a rock or a sand dune than the mere outer appearance of reality."
"The last century laid a great deal of emphasis on the outer world of reality but neglected the
inner world." affinity to the Middle Ages "Now line, as I have pointed out, is an invention - a
product of the brain and soul of man. It is perfectly logical and natural, then, that to the lines
that we find in nature we should add other lines that are teh product of our inner vision. Such
drawing can present both the outer husk and the inner essence. It is infinitely superiror to the
machine that we call the camera. You cannot take a camera with you into your dream world."
surrealism again." "You will note that, generally speaking, though I give free rein to my fancy,
I have not neglected the outer shell of things. The utter rejection of reality is a perilous
matter. Totally abstract fancy has a tendency to become stylized and conventional... Abstract
facy that becomes pure convention is as much to be shunned by the artist as the slavish
copying of nature. (paragraph break) The searcher after Fantasy should not avoid reality; he
should know how to present the outer appearance of things together with inner content." this
was written when Grosz had already abandoned political satire.17
Drinnen und Draussen
 rounded teeth of the fat bourgeois men as opposed to the straight jagged teeth of homeless man

15
Notes from George Grosz’s teaching, 1934 compiled by Jent Moor in 1934-1945, published in Flavell,
316.
16
Notes from George Grosz’s teaching, 317.
17
George Grosz, “On my Drawings,” introduction to George Grosz Drawings (New York: H. Bittner and
Co., 1944).

13
 Develop an angle or argument about the work concerning one of the many themes discussed in this
class, such as utopia, decoration, primitivism, art and politics, autonomization etc. Offer a critical
reading of the literature.
 George (used to be Georg) Grosz, Inside and Outside, 1926. Drinnen und Draussen.
 1.5 inch margins
 NJ18 G88

Using George Grosz's Inside and Outside, I would like to examine: Does art's engagement with the politics
of the real world involve an embrace of naturalism? Grosz was devoted to the "brutal reality," but one can
hardly call his paintings completely realistic. What is the relationship between Grosz' devotion to realism
and the techniques he used to convey his interpretation of industrial relations?

talk more extensively about Marxism

Art became the vehicle of his pessimistic world view, reflecting a ruined world that manifested itself most
trenchantly in the big city and its excesses. (Grove)
the Berlin Dada movement, which he joined in 1918 (see Dada, §4). In 1920, with Heartfield and Otto Dix,
he took part in the Erste Internationale Dada-Messe. As well as developing the technique of Photomontage,
(Grove)
 adopted by the gallery of Alfred Flechtheim in 1925. However, his attitude towards the class struggle
was thereby blunted.
"In 1926, Grosz became a director of a Society for Politics, Science, and the Arts, known as the 1926
Club."

INTRO
The German war of 1914-18 permanently altered the course of Grosz’s career, from an innocuous
artist cultivated in the academy into an active political agitator. In this war, Grosz saw rapacious
nationalism and militaristic expansionism propel Germany into a deadly war, all with the enthusiastic
support of average Germans. When Grosz witnessed the horrors of the war himself in a military hospital,
he began to develop the devout moral purpose that lead him to become a critical artist charged with the
mission of instructing the German people. During the chaotic interwar period of the Weimar Republic,
high unemployment, the burden of reparation repayment, and hyperinflation left scores of Germans in a
state of penury. Hitler gained power upon the premise of providing bread and work to the German people,
all the while building up nationalistic sentiment, expanding the military, and repressing wages and workers’
organizations. Throughout this period, up until he fled Germany for America prior to WWII, Grosz
engaged in revolutionary activities to champion the causes of the proletariat and challenge bellicose
nationalism. He had joined the German Communist Party (KPD) in 1918, and became president over the
first formal organization of KPD artists on 18 June 1924. This organization, called the “Red Group”,
contributed newspapers, posters, placards, and leaflets to support the propaganda and election campaigns of
the KPD.
Grosz painted and drew to serve the needs of politics. He criticized ideas that the artist is
somehow above the concerns of society or that works of art are somehow sacred or transcendent. All art is
engaged in the current political concerns of the age. The production of art, like that of any other industrial
trade, is determined by the material circumstances that surround it. Any art that claims to be neutral or
unrelated automatically serves to maintain the status quo. Revolutionary art, which Grosz sought to create,
engaged in the present-day conflicts of the working man or woman.

 avante-garde not in formal means but politically. though, he saw it not so much as a "marching
forward" but an attempt to stop society's backward slide into the chaos of WWII.
 ROLE OF ART
 SUBORDINATION OF ART TO POLITICS
 Grosz and Heartfield criticized the contemporary art world and the elevation of the artist to
quasi-divine status. (Grove) “such art works were not treasures elevated above the struggle
 but symptoms of the economic, political AND cultural dominance of the middle classes over
the workers” (textbook, 291). art is not transcendent, not “neutral, disinterested or in any
sense above society’s material conflicts.” (textbook, 293).
 art is subordinate to politics, instead of being above politics
 "The highest art is one that manifests in its consciousness the countless problems of the
present day, that seems to have risen out of the explosions of the previous week, and that takes
its form from immediate contact with the conflicts of the present."18
 "In his polemical writings of the early 1920s, Grosz had frequently insisted on the utter
irrelevance of issues of quality and distinctions between art and propaganda.
 "feverish interrelatedness of everything"19
 REJECTION OF EXPRESSIONISM
 "Expressionist artists and writers have grouped together into a generation which is already
looking longingly for literary and artistic esteem and honourable recognition from the
bourgeoisie. Under the pretext of propagating spiritual values they have retreated, in their
struggles against Naturalism, into a set of abstract and sentimental postures which are based
on a life which is cozy but devoid of content and action."20
 opposition to patriotic romanticism
 a muckraker
 "Down with the bloodless abstractions of Expressionism! Down with the utopian theories of
literary twits!"21

 UNCOVERING
 Marxism. revealing the contradictions within society. surrealism and Freud.
 art as some sort of penetrating vision
 stripping naked social reality
 social reality as opposed to visual reality
 juxtapositions- revealing the inside
 In his art he fought against preoccupations of Wilhelmine society by uncovering their shadowy
aspects of crime, murder and erotic license. (Grove)
 “revealing the UNDERLYING truth rather than the superficiality of appearance… artists could
legitimately go beyond an academic naturalism.” (294)
 “hoping to kill [the essential villainy] by bringing it into the open.” (Hess)
 "a psychological use of x-ray transparency" (Hess)
 VISUAL CHAOS = SOCIAL/MORAL CHAOS
 “contradictory grammars (massively receding perspective AND overlapping planes; stylization
AND still legible figuration) produce a visual chaos clearly intended as an equivalent for the social
and moral chaos of the modern city itself” (285). “tilting planes, the sharp diagonals, the abrupt
changes of scale and the hurrying figures” “overlapping planes and dynamic ‘lines of force’”
(textbook, 285)
 INSIDE VS OUTSIDE: CLASS DISTINCTIONS
 the inside is larger, more colorful, with clearer details
 the outside is smaller, the details are rougher, sketchier, less distinct, blurrier
 almost a marginalization of the outside in this picture
 you can only see the faces of what looks like a begging war cripple and a modestly dressed
working class man
 the bourgeois couple on the outside-their backs turned towards the viewer- they are walking away
18
George Grosz and Richard Huelsenbeck, “Dadaistisches Manifest,” translated by Mary Kay Flavell, George Grosz, a Biography
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 307.
19
George Grosz and Richard Huelsenbeck, “Dadaistisches Manifest,” translated by Mary Kay Flavell, George Grosz, a Biography
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 308.
20
George Grosz and Richard Huelsenbeck, “Dadaistisches Manifest,” translated by Mary Kay Flavell, George Grosz, a Biography
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 307.
21
George Grosz and Richard Huelsenbeck, “Dadaistisches Manifest,” translated by Mary Kay Flavell, George Grosz, a Biography
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 308.

15
  Insid eis crowded, claustophobic, excess is stifling and strongly felt. outside is cold, forlorn.
difference in heat. hot colors, cold colors. everything on the outside appears to be a haze. on the
inside, an oppressive excess of detail.
 the big bourgeois appears to be gazing outside while the outside folk can’t see inside.
 outer appearences, inner meaning. the inside, the heart, the core of society, is corrupt and
depraved.
 WALL: "I felt oppositions in society, like bleeding, gaping wounds, and even after the war had
finished I saw brutality and horror... I often felt like a wall, giving off a bloody, dehumanized echo
of the surrounding world. A wall onto which this present age engraved some of its ghostly and
grotesque faces."22 the working class man looks like and passes by like a ghost
 EXCESS
 the strong complementaries of green and and on the inside. green leaves and green ribbon on red
curtain background.
 on the outside the bourgeois walking away. the guy has a few folds of fat that are constrained only
by his belt. excess of consumption.
 big bourgeois guy again- fat rolling out of his tuxedo collar.
 ARTIFICIALITY
 the eyes: glasses, monocle. the bourgeois are the gazers. artificiality? artificiality of sight, of
light (from the lamp as opposed to the outside sun)
 TABLE
 the table is tilted towards us to show us everything on the table.. not a true prespective- looks
like we’re looking down at the table from directly above it, when the rest of the scene
suggests that we supposed to be looking at its side. shows us what he owns, whe he
consumes. his commodities.
 the blue pail of ice- blue emphasizing its coldness. on the other side of the table, the yellow
lifght and exuding heat of the lamp, enhanced by the red lampshade.
 SEXUALITY
 The sexual murder became a prominent motif, in which the combination of sexuality and violence
was presented as a ritualization of the human quest for power, exemplified by political practice.
(Grove). sexual exploitation and social exploitation. treating both women and workers as
commodities. prostitution as allegory for the corruption of society (commodified sex).
 the outside bourgeois man has sexual intentions. animated right arm. shrugged shoulders, as if
telling a secret to the woman. something a little bit guilty about his body language.
propositioning her? he’s holding her arm. what are they syaing? it’s hidden from us, it’s on the
inside.
 ALLEGORY
 He characterized the age in terms of the class society and invented specific figures who stood for
the new classes and economic interests in German society. (Grove)
 allegory as opposed to realism
 "the 'type portrait,' the German officer, the official, the philistine, the judge, the blackmarketeer,
the war cripple, the war doctor, the war priest...” (Hess)
 COMPARISON OF THE WALKER-BY AND CENTRAL BOURGEOIS
 the modestly dressed (and modestly painted) working class man, about to walk by. head lowered.
downcast expression. wrinkles and bags around the eyes. looking downward, eyes hardly open-
don’t want to tface the harsh sad reality with all its attendent ugliness. single monochrome color.
dull greyish/purplish. indistinct, unnoticable, unworthy of attention. a cigarette haning outta the
mouth. compare to the central bourgeois figuer’s large cigar, huge eyes, large imposing face and
features. colorufl. bright red cheeks. thick protruding lips. licentiousness, lewdness, and its
synonyms, corruption and moral depravity. whereas the working class man’s nose is just a thin
outline, the central bourgeois’ nose is much more 3-D- large, robust, protruding. colorful
green/red ribbons drpaed across him. exaggerated 3-dimensionality whereas the working class
man is basically a 2-dimensional figure with barely-visible outlines. colorful green and red

22
George Grosz, “Notes for My Trial,” 3 December 1930, first published in Flavell, 314.

16
 ribbons draped across him. bright white of his eyes. a strong, fat, obnoxious presence. the whole
figure- strong shading as opposed to the working man’s monochrome. shading of suit goes the
whole scale from black to white.
 COMPARISON OF HOMELESS GUY AND CENTRAL BOURGEOIS GUY
 pudgy hand of the bourgeois guy compared to the bony, knarled hands of the homeless guy. the
shriveled, shrunken face compared to the bourgeois’ bloated face. imbalance, just like the
imbalance between the sides of the inside and outside (take measurements!!!!). wrinkles. wrinkly
shirt as oopposed to the beourgious’ well-ironed suit. jagged edges of the sleev- worn down, old.
 MORE COMPARISONS
 rounded teeth of the fat bourgeois men as opposed to the straight jagged teeth of homeless man
 STOICISM OF THE POOR
 fur coat (or boa) of the bourgeois lady. it appears to be cold outside. the trees are barren and have
no leaves. inhospitalbe outter environment. working lcass man with his buttonned coat and
tightened fists. stolic and stoic instead of excessive. it’s uncertain how the working class man will
respond to the homeless man. looks like he’s about to walk past him, though he might be holding
money in his left fist, which he is extending out either defensively or generously.
 TENSION W/COMMUNIST PARTY
 TRANSITION: it should be noted, however, that the homeless guy is not portrayed in the most
flattering of terms, and the working class man does not look all too attuned or sympathetic to the
cripple’s plight.
 Grosz's growing pessimism about the masses. . awareness of the growth of fascism, and his belief
that communism subscribed to an unrealistic psychology of mass behaviour (it couldn't be done).
the masses were gradually being swung to the right. "hurra-bolshevism", no point in presenting a
sentimental, idealized view of the proletariat.
 response to complaints about his representation of workers :"I... do not consider it necessary to
satisfy the demands of a 'Hurrah'-shouting Bolshevism which images the working man with his
hair neatly combed and dressed up in archaic heroic costume... I absolutely reject the idea that one
can only serve the cause of propaganda by proudcing a onesided, flattering and false idealization
of life... The task of art is the help the worker understand his exploitation and his suffering, to
compel him to acknowledge openly his wretchedness and enslavement, to awaken self-
consciousness in hima nd to inspire him to engage in class warfare."23 (Flavell, 312)
 Kurt Tucholsky's letters in 1925. criticism of the quality of satire in Der Knuppel (u with two dots
on top) Tucholsky asked "Why aren't you simply more naturalistic?... Because people instinctively
realized that a contrived satire is complete nonsense."24
 1925- criticism of Grosz's less-than-ideal portrayal of the proletariat at the Tenth Party Congress of
the KPD in July 1925, the KPD leveled criticism at Der Knuppel. elitist and ineffective, more
involved in producing art than political agitation "overintellectualization and failure to connect
with the heroism of the class struggle"
 use of satire was controversial, since satire had become a popular bourgeois thing
 Grosz's growing status in the established German art world. Grosz coopted, or subsumed into the
establishment, neutralized.
 REALISM
 REPRESENTATION
 representating something unvisual, like Kandinsky
 german Expressionism: Grosz as an expressionist- his feelings about society come out onto
the painting
 Cubist “collage, Expressionist distortion, Futurist spatial dynamism” (textbook)
 “Grosz is usually seen as the central figure in the Weimar debates about artistic realism.”
(284)

23
George Grosz, “My Life,” first published in Prozektor 14 (Moscow, 1928), 153. Translated by Mary Kay Flavell, George Grosz, a
Biography (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 312.
24
Kurt Tocholsky, Ausgewa(2 dots)hlte Briefe, 1913-1925, eds. Mary Gerold-Tucholsky and Fritz J. Raddatz (Frankfurt am Main:
Rowohlt), 166.

17
  "A picture could be made with some part impressionistic, and some part realistic, and some
part abstract. No one has made much experiment in this direction. Here is something to be
done."25 surrealism: "Paint not so much with the conscious; paint sometimes with the
unconscious."26
 "In fact it is almost everywhere if you can penetrate deeply enough beneath the husk of
things. For, after all, nature is not simply thesum total of animate and inanimate objects.
There is more to a tree or a rock or a sand dune than the mere outer appearance of reality."
"The last century laid a great deal of emphasis on the outer world of reality but neglected the
inner world." affinity to the Middle Ages "Now line, as I have pointed out, is an invention - a
product of the brain and soul of man. It is perfectly logical and natural, then, that to the lines
that we find in nature we should add other lines that are teh product of our inner vision. Such
drawing can present both the outer husk and the inner essence. It is infinitely superiror to the
machine that we call the camera. You cannot take a camera with you into your dream world."
surrealism again." "You will note that, generally speaking, though I give free rein to my fancy,
I have not neglected the outer shell of things. The utter rejection of reality is a perilous
matter. Totally abstract fancy has a tendency to become stylized and conventional... Abstract
facy that becomes pure convention is as much to be shunned by the artist as the slavish
copying of nature. (paragraph break) The searcher after Fantasy should not avoid reality; he
should know how to present the outer appearance of things together with inner content." this
was written when Grosz had already abandoned political satire.27
 retrograde formal means. not the most innovative formally- political rather than formal
avante-garde.
 finding middle point between modernism, political critique, and realism
 PESSIMISM
 The war made Grosz into a misanthropist and a Utopian (Grove)
 In 1918 he listed the qualities that he wished his art to possess: 'Hardness, brutality, clarity
that hurts! There's enough soporific music.' (Grove)
 cynicism, satire, caricature, “hedonistic and hostile”, rotten society, lurid
 emotionless, unsentimental, distanced, alienated
 grotesque, ugly, unattractive
 "As a realist, I prefer to use my pen and brush primarily to put down what I see and observe;
and this is generally unromantic, sober and far from idyllic. (paragraph break) Heaven knows
why it's so, but when you look closely, people and objects can easily become inadeequate,
ugly, and often meaningless or ambiguous... So when I put down my graphic signs; they are
sober and without any mystery."28 (Love Above All, Flavell, 312)
 But these types recognized themselves in the mirror of his art... He had at last shown their
faces as they were. What writers and orators wrote and said he made visible, and it was not a
pleasant sight... George Grosz is a satirist not a caricaturist... Lust, greed, hate, drink and
sexual perversions are only the other side of 'normal' life. Periods of reaction, Lenin had said,
are periods of pornography... Grosz painted society and its pillars naked and unadorned."
 CENSORSHIP DUE TO HIS DISGUSTING REALISM:
 On 16 Gebruary 1924, Grosz stood trial once again, this time on charges of 'distributing
obscene materials'" (106) Ecce Homo. "bourgeois figures with fleshy, misshapen bodies and
scarred and blemished faces engage in a variety of explicit sexual acts. Thin and
downtrodden workers, sailors, and war cripples, who appear in several of the images, occupy
a peripheral role to the central thematic concern of bourgeois sexual indulgence."
(McCloskey, 206)

25
Notes from George Grosz’s teaching, 1934 compiled by Jent Moor in 1934-1945, published in Flavell, 316.
26
Notes from George Grosz’s teaching, 1934 compiled by Jent Moor in 1934-1945, published in Flavell, 317.
27
George Grosz, “On my Drawings,” introduction to George Grosz Drawings (New York: H. Bittner and Co., 1944).
28
Preface to U(2 dots)ber alles die Liebe, 1930, tr. by Mary Kay Flavell, George Grosz, a Biography (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1988), 312.

18
  the presiding judge "found Grosz's work too naturalistic in detail and lacking in the
appropriate aesthetic distancing and artistic quality that would make such images acceptable
for public distribution." (McCloskey, 107-108)
 he ended up being fined 500 marks and his paintings were banned and confiscated
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
 Realism, Rationalism, and Surrealism textbook, pages 41-42, 284-297, 314
 George Grosz, M. Kay Flavell, 1988, Yale University Press, New Haven & London
 Author:, Grosz, George, 1893-1959.; Title:, Drawings and watercolors by George Grosz :
[catalogue of an exhibition held from] June 1-June 26, 1964 [at the] Paul Kantor Gallery, Beverly
Hills, California.; introduction by Hans Hess
 Barbara McCloskey, George Grosz and the Communist Party (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1997). stopped on top of p. 128
 Misc bibliography mess
 'Dadaistisches Manifest, (Dadist Manifesto), 1918 (with Richard Huelsenbeck et al.): Schneede,
(2) pp. 20-2 (Schneede, DIE SWANZIGER JAHRE, pp. 20-2) tr. KF
 hurrah-bolshevism stuff from here: My Life, 1928 Schneed, p. 153. First published in Prozektor
14, (Moscow, 1928), tr. KF.
 Love Above All: preface to U(2 dots)ber alles die Liebe, 1930, tr. KF
 from My Life. Notes for my Trial, 3 December 1930. Unpublished typescript in GAH, tr. KF.
GAH = Grosz Archive, Houghton Library, Harvard University. letters and diaries.
 Notes from George Grosz Teaching 1934. These notes, which reproduce Grosz's comments in
class or notes on the back of student drawings, were compiled by Jent Moor in 1934-1945.
Unpublished notes in GAH.

Communist party was losing elections. KPD's number of depudies dropped form 62 to 45 in 1924.
"If you're a Dadaist, you should be opposed to this manifesto!" (from a manifesto signed by him, Flavell,
308)
 Out of opposition to the military scare campaign against Britain and intellectual affinity to the
USA, he anglicized his name, which confirmed his anti-nationalist attitude. (Grove)

19
1.5 inch margins

art as some sort of penetrating vision

penetrating through superficial veils of reality
stripping naked social realities
social reality as opposed to visual reality

Using George Grosz's Inside and Outside, I would like to examine: Does art's engagement with the politics of the real world involve
an embrace of naturalism? Grosz was devoted to the "brutal reality," but one can hardly call his paintings completely realistic. What
is the relationship between Grosz' devotion to realism and the techniques he used to convey his interpretation of industrial relations?

art as some sort of penetrating vision

stripping naked social reality
social reality as opposed to visual reality
(representating something unvisual, like Kandinsky)
juxtapositions- revealing the inside
german Expressionism
representation and realism

 NJ18 G88

 Develop an angle or argument about the work concerning one of the many themes discussed in this class, such as utopia,
decoration, primitivism, art and politics, autonomization etc. Offer a critical reading of the literature.
 George (used to be Georg) Grosz, Inside and Outside, 1926. Drinnen und Draussen.
 http://www.groveart.com/shared/views/article.html?from=search&session_search_id=1005689685&session_name=f851a954ec9
9e2c0&hitnum=47&section=art.035094&start=26&query=%22George%20Grosz%22&search_subview=search_subject
 The war made Grosz into a misanthropist and a Utopian
 In his art he fought against preoccupations of Wilhelmine society by uncovering their shadowy aspects of crime, murder and
erotic licence. The sexual murder became a prominent motif, in which the combination of sexuality and violence was presented
as a ritualization of the human quest for power, exemplified by political practice. Art became the vehicle of his pessimistic world
view, reflecting a ruined world that manifested itself most trenchantly in the big city and its excesses.
 Out of opposition to the military scare campaign against Britain and intellectual affinity to the USA, he anglicized his name,
which confirmed his anti-nationalist attitude. By giving his art a strong moral purpose, he intended to become the German
Hogarth. In 1918 he listed the qualities that he wished his art to possess: 'Hardness, brutality, clarity that hurts! There's enough
soporific music.' In the same year he joined the German Communist Party.
 influence of the Italian Futurists
 'That this epoch is heading downhill towards destruction is my unshakable conviction'
 the Berlin Dada movement, which he joined in 1918 (see Dada, §4). In 1920, with Heartfield and Otto Dix, he took part in the
Erste Internationale Dada-Messe. As well as developing the technique of Photomontage, Grosz and Heartfield criticized the
contemporary art world and the elevation of the artist to quasi-divine status.
 one of Germany's most significant critical artists
 He characterized the age in terms of the class society and invented specific figures who stood for the new classes and economic
interests in German society.
 adopted by the gallery of Alfred Flechtheim in 1925. However, his attitude towards the class struggle was thereby blunted.

21
 Realism, Rationalism, and Surrealism textbook, pages 41-42, 284-297, 314
 “collage, Expressionist distortion, Futurist spatial dynamism”
 contradiction: synthesizing Futurism and the past
 realism and expressionism
 “Grosz is usually seen as the central figure in the Weimar debates about artistic realism.” (284)
 cynicism, satire, caricature, “hedonistic and hostile”, rotten society, lurid
 emotionless, unsentimental, distanced, alienated
 “contradictory grammers (massively receding perspective AND overlapping planes; stylization AND still legible figuration)
proudce a visual chaos clearly intended as an equivalent for the social and moral chaos of the modern city itself” (285). “tilting
planes, the sharp diagonals, the abrupt changes of scale and the hurrying figures” “overlapping planes and dynamic ‘lines of
force’” (285)
 “far from realism in any merely naturalistic sense… their meanings are allegorical” (290). prostitution as allegory for the
corruption of society (commodified sex). “revealing the UNDERLYING truth rather than the superificality of appearance…
artists could legitmately go beyond an academic naturalism.” (294)
 “such art works were not treasures elevated above the struggle but symptoms of the economic, political AND cultural dominance
of the middle classes over the workers” (291). art is not transcendent, not “neutral, disinterested or in any sense above society’s
material conflicts.” (293).

22
Twist: does art's engagement in the real world (politics) involve an embrace of naturalism (illusionism)? How far away from
reality/illusionism does he get in building a Utopian vision? How Utopian was he? Some authors call him so, but he begins to move
away. Thinks Communism is too idealistic. Brutal reality. But one could hardly call his drawings realistic. Role of allegory?

a muckraker

George Grosz, M. Kay Flavell, 1988, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, starting @ p. 54

Grosz's growing pessimism about the masses. . awareness of the growth of fascism, and his belief that communism subscribed to an
unrealistic psychology of mass behaviour (it couldn't be done). the masses were gradually being swung to the right. "hurra-
bolshevism", no point in presenting a sentimental, idealized view of the proletariat.

manisfesto signed by him:

"The highest art is one that manifests in its consciousness the countless problems of the present day, that seems to have risen out of
the explosions of the previous week, and that takes its form from immediate contact with the conflicts of the present." (307)

"Expressionist artists and writers have grouped together into a generation which is already looking longingly for literary and artistic
esteem and honourable recognition from the bourgeoisie. Under the pretext of propagating spiritual values they ahve retreated, in
their struggles against Naturalism, into a set of abstract and sentimental postures which are based on a life which is cosy but devoid of
conent and action." (307)

"feverish interrelatedness of everything" (308)

"Down with the bloodless abstractions of Expressionism! Down with the utopian theories of literary twits!" (308)

"If you're a Dadaist, you should be opposed to this manifesto!" (308)

art is subordinate to politics, instead of being above politics

opposition to patriotic romanticism

complaints about his representation of workers (p312)

"I... do not consider it necessary to satisfy the demands of a 'Hurrah'-shouting Bolshevism which images the working man with his
hair neatly combed and dressed up in archaic heroic costume... I absolutely reject the idea that one can only serve the cause of
propaganda by proudcing a onesided, flattering and false idealization of life... The task of art is the help the worker understand his
exploitation and his suffering, to compel him to acknowledge openly his wretchedness and enslavement, to awaken self-consciousness
in hima nd to inspire him to engage in class warfare."

Love Above All (312)

"As a realist, I prefer to use my pen and bursh primarily to put down what I see and observe; and this is generally unromantic, sober
and far from idyllic.
Heaven knowls why it's so, but when you look closely, people and objects can easily become inadeequate, ugly, and
often meaningless or ambiguous... So when I put down my graphic signs; they are sober and without any mystery."

start reading again on page 313!!

Thursday starting at 4pm

23
Author:, Grosz, George, 1893-1959.

Title:, Drawings and watercolors by George Grosz : [catalogue of

an
exhibition held from] June 1-June 26, 1964 [at the]
Paul
Kantor Gallery, Beverly Hills, California.

introduction by Hans Hess

"The German war of 1914-18 prevented George Grosz from becoming a

painter of fake history."

"the 'type portrait,' the German officer, the official, the philistine,
the judge, the blackmarketeer, the war cripple, the war doctor, teh war
priest... he had a passion for justice, which means he hated
judges...... hoping to kill [the essential villainy] by bringing it into
the open. But these types recognized themselves in the mirror of his
art... He had at last shown their faces as they were. What wirters and
orators wrote and said he made visible, and it was not a pleasant
sight... George Grosz is a satirist not a caricaturist... Lust, greed,
hate, drink and sexual perversions are only the other side of 'normal'
life. Periods of reaction, Lenin had siad, are preiods of
pornography... Grosz painted society and its pillars naked and
unadorned."

Grosz as an expressionist- his feelings about society come out onto the
painting

"a psychological use of x-ray transparency"

24
George Grosz and the Communist Party
Barbara McCloskey
Pinceton University Press
Princeton, New Jersey
1997

On 16 Gebruary 1924, Grosz stood trial once again, this time on charages
of 'distributing obscene materials'" (106) Ecce Homo. "bourgeiois
figures with fleshy, mishapen bodies and scarred and blemished faces
engage in a vireity of explicit sexual acts. Thin and downtrodden
workers, sailors, an dwar cripples, who appear in several of the images,
occupy a peripheral role to the central thematic concern of bourgeois
sexual indulgence." (206)

the presiding judge "found Grosz's work too naturalistic in detail and
lacking int he appropirate aesthetic distancing and artistic quality
that would make such images acceptable for public distribution."
(107-108)

he ended up being fined 500 marks and his paintings were baned and
confiscated

Grosz became president over the first formal organization of KpD artists
on 18 June 1924. The Red Group.

contributed to newspapers, posters, placards, leaflets

Communist party was losing elections. KPD's number of depudies dropped

form 62 to 45 in 1924.

"In his polemical wiritings of the early 1920s, Grosz had frequently
insited on the utter irrelevance of issues of quality and distinctions
between art and propaganda.

Kurt Tucholsky's letters in 1925. criticism of the quality of satire in

Der Knuppel (u with two dots on top)

Tucholsky asked "Why aren't you simply more naturalistic?... Because

people instinctively realized that a contrived satire is complete
nonsense."
Kurt Tocholsky, Ausgewa(2 dots)hlte Briefe, 1913-1925, eds. Mary
Gerold-Tucholsky and Fritz J. Raddatz (Frankfurt am Main: Rowohlt),
166.

1925- criticsm of Grosz's less-than-ideal portrayal of the proletariat

at the Tenth Party Congress of the KPD in July 1925, the KPD leveled
criticism at Der Knuppel. elitist and ineffective, more involved in
producing art than political agitation
"overintellectualization and failure to connect with the heroism of the
class struggle"

use of satire was controversial, since satire had become a popular

bourgeiois thing

Grosz's growing status in the established German art world. Grosz

coopted, or subsumed into the establishment, neutralized.

"In 1926, Grosz became a director of a Society for Politics, Science,

and the Arts, known as the 1926 Club."

stopped on top of p. 128

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me, looking at the painting

the inside is larger, more colorful, with clearer details

the outside is smaller, the details are rougher, sketchier, less distinct, blurrier

almost a marginalization of the outside in this picture

the bourgeois couple on the outside-their bakcs turned twoards the viewere- they are walking away

you can only see the faces of what looks like a begging war cirpple and a mdodestly dressed (and mdestly-painted!) working class
man

the modestly painted working class man, about to walk by. head lowered. downcast expression. wrinkles nad bags around the eyes.
looking downward, eyes hardly open- don’t want to tface the harsh sad reality with all its attendent ugliness. single monochrome
color. dull greyish/purplish. indistinct, unnoticable, unworthy of attention. a cigarette haning outta the mouth. compare to the central
bourgeois figuer’s large cigar, huge eyes, large imposing face and features. colorufl. bright red cheeks. thick protruding lips.
licentiousness, lewdness, and its synonyms, corruption and moral depravity. whereas the working class man’s nose is just a thin
outline, the central bourgeois’ nose is much more 3-D- large, robust, protruding. colorful green/red ribbons drpaed across him.
exaggerated 3-dimensionality whereas the working class man is basically a 2-dimensional figure with barely-visible outlines. colorful
green and red ribbons draped across him. bright white of his eyes. a strong, fat, obnoxious presence. the whole figure- strong
shading as opposed to the working man’s monochrome. shading of suit goes the whole scale from black to white.

the strong complementaries of green and ared on the inside. green leaves and green ribbon on red curtain background.

the eyes: glasses, monocle. the bourgeois are the gazers. artificiality? artificiality of sight, of light (from the lamp as opposed to the
outside sun)

excess. grotesque, ugly, unattractive

the blue pail of ice- blue emphasizing its coldness. on the other side of the table, the yellow lifght and exuding heat of the lamp,
enhanced by the red lampshade.

Insid eis crowded, claustophobic, excess is stifling and strongly felt. outside is cold, forlorn. difference in heat. hot colors, cold
colors. everything on the outside appears to be a haze. on the inside, an oppressive excess of detail.

pudgy hand of the bourgeois guy compared to the bony, knarled hands of the homeless guy. the shriveled, shrunken face compared to
the bourgeois’ bloated face. imbalance, just like the imbalance between the sides of the inside and outside (take measurements!!!!).
wrinkles. wrinkly shirt as oopposed to the beourgious’ well-ironed suit. jagged edges of the sleev- worn down, old.

on the outside the bourgeois walking away. the guy has a few folds of fat that are constrained only by his belt. excess of
consumption.

fur coat (or boa) of the bourgeois lady. it appears to be cold outside. the trees are barren and have no leaves. inhospitalbe outter
environment. working lcass man with his buttonned coat and tightened fists. stunch and toci instead of excessive. it’s uncertain how
the working class man will respond to the homeless man. looks like he’s about to walk past him, though he might be holding money
in his left fist, which he is extending out either defensively or generously.

the outside bourgeois man has sexual intentions. animated right arm. shrugged shoulders, as if telling a secret to the woman.
something a little bit guilty about his body language. propositioning her? he’s holding her arm. what are they syaing? it’s hidden
from us, it’s on the inside.

big bourgeois guy again- fat rolling out of his tuxedo collar.

the table is tilted towards us to show us everything on the table.. not a true prespective- looks like we’re looking down at the table
from directly above it, when the rest of the scene suggests that we supposed to be looking at its side. shows us what he owns, whe he
consumes. his commodities.

the big bourgeois appears to be gazing outside while the outside folk can’t see inside.

rounded teeth of the fat bourgeous men as opposed to the straight jaggeg teeth of homelessman

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