FOTO: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918 – 1945
In all these years, I had never been to the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. I was surprised to find out that it was conveniently located on Fifth Avenue and 89th Street in Manhattan. Recently the Guggenheim had been going through a renovation process that has made it a bit unattractive from the outside due to all the scaffolding. Those thoughts were quickly erased once I entered the museum and was wowed by a spiraling walkway – laden with various paintings – that leads all the way to the top of the museum. On my visit, I viewed the FOTO: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918 – 1945 exhibit that had begun October 12th. Personally, I love photography and I thought that this would be a very interesting exhibit to attend. The exhibit did not disappoint. It displayed through the modern art of photography (at the time) that the emerging artists of Central Europe during the First and Second World War were able to provide a social commentary through various images and styles captured by their shutters.
The exhibit showed that in the 1920s and 1930s, photography became very popular across Central Europe. It sparked the imagination of hundreds of artists, provided a creative outlet for thousands, and became a symbol of modernity for millions through its use in magazines, newspapers, advertisements, and books. The exhibit was divided into different sections: The Cut-and-Paste World: Recovering from War, Laboratories and Classrooms, Modern Living, New Women — New Men, The Spread of Surrealism, Activist Documents, Land Without a Name, and The Cut-and-Paste World: War Returns. Entering into the exhibit, the first thing that I thought to myself is: “Why did the curator organize all these pieces of work into one exhibit?” The answer was easier to find in this exhibit than in the others that I have been to. The reason was that all the pieces of art were created through the same medium, photography, and that they all shared a common idea: providing a social commentary of Central Europe during the 20’s and 30’s through different styles of photography.
Each section of the exhibit provided a different commentary as well as a different style. The Cut-and-Paste World: Recovering from War was all about photomontage, the technique that involved cutting images from various sources, usually newspapers, and editing them to create a whole work. These images displayed the dreadful mechanization and destruction of bodies during World War I. Laboratories and Classrooms displayed the techniques of texture, translucency, and tonal gradations that were experimented in the laboratories and taught in the classrooms all the while facing fierce opposition from the Nazi regime who tried to stop its progression. Modern Living displayed urban lifestyles and new constructions, which were taken from varying angles and/or close-ups. New Women – New Men was not highly noted as much for its techniques, but for its artists. Women, showing their progression in society and upsetting their conventional roles, took many of the photos taken in this selection. The Spread of Surrealism was the one that piqued my interest the most. The pictures, aside from their meaning, were a relief to the eyes with their vivid colors and imaginative and distorted images. Surrealism, in its fantasy-based nature, offered a means to turn one’s back on the norm of so much art and culture in the region. Activist Documents carried photographs that called for uprising against current conditions. The photographs depict the physical and mental toll of labor as well as capturing the full spectrum of a worker’s life. Land Without a Name contained a series of pictures that captured landscapes throughout Central Europe that has not been “named”; not named meaning that they were not under any political controls and therefore did not have a proper name. The last section in the exhibit was The Cut-and-Paste World: War Returns. This section depicted the renewed life of the photomontage in order to show the horrific events and provide a commentary on the terrible effects of the Second World War.
For someone who enjoys photography, this exhibit proves to be a very interesting view. The works of art set aside for this exhibit are very unique in that they reflect the artistic achievements of a part of the world that at the time was not fully aware of the art of photography. Yet, with the growing hostilities of the times, they were able to use this form of art and were able to display the everyday occurrences in a very creative manner. For a first trip to the Guggenheim, this proved to be a very enjoyable experience and I greatly look forward to attending another exhibit there.
October 31st, 2007 at 1:40 pm
I went to the Guggenheim just before this exhibit opened to see differents works also made through photography. This exhibit also sounds very interesting, to bad I missed out on it.