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Otto Dix and the First World War

Grotesque Humor, Camaraderie and Remembrance

by Michael Mackenzie (Author)
©2019 Monographs XXVI, 422 Pages
Series: German Visual Culture, Volume 6

Summary

Otto Dix fought in the First World War for the better part of four years before becoming one of the most important artists of the Weimar era. Marked by the experience, he made monumental, difficult and powerful works about it. Whereas Dix has often been presented as a lone voice of reason and opposition in Germany between the wars, this book locates his work squarely in the mainstream of Weimar society.
Informed by recent studies of collective remembrance, of camaraderie, and of the popular, working-class socialist groups that commemorated the war, this book takes Dix’s very public, monumental works out of the isolation of the artist’s studio and returns them to a context of public memorials, mass media depictions, and the communal search for meaning in the war. The author argues that Dix sought to establish a community of veterans through depictions of the war experience that used the soldier’s humorous, grotesque language of the trenches and that deliberately excluded women and other non-combatants. His depictions were preoccupied with heteronormativity in the context of intimate touch and tenderness between soldiers at the front and with sexual potency in the face of debilitating wounds suffered by others in the war.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the author
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Contents
  • List of Figures
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • Chapter 1 Dix in Uniform: The First World War and the Front Experience
  • Chapter 2 Dix and Dada: War Cripples and Neurasthenics, Soldier’s Slang, and the Humor of Grotesque Realism
  • Chapter 3 Dix in Düsseldorf: The Scandal of The Trench and Business with Karl Nierendorf During the Inflation Years
  • Chapter 4 Dix and Other Veterans: The Print Portfolio The War, the Reichsbanner, and Social Democratic Memories of the War Experience
  • Chapter 5 Dix in the Late Weimar Era: The Triptych The War, All Quiet on the Western Front, and the Contest over the Memory of the War
  • Chapter 6 Dix in Nazi Germany and “Inner Emigration”: Flanders and the End of the Contest over the Memory of the War
  • Bibliography
  • Index
  • Series Index

OTTO DIX AND
THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Grotesque Humor, Camaraderie
and Remembrance

Michael Mackenzie

image
PETER LANG

Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • New York • Wien

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche National-bibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at
http://dnb.d-nb.de.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Names: Mackenzie, Michael, 1965- author.

Title: Otto Dix and the First World War : grotesque humor, camaraderie and remembrance / Michael Mackenzie.

Description: Oxford ; New York : Peter Lang, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018018396 | ISBN 9783034317238 (alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Dix, Otto, 1891-1969--Criticism and interpretation. | World War, 1914-1918--Art and the war. | World War, 1914-1918--Germany. | Art and society--Germany--History--20th century.

Classification: LCC N6888.D5 M24 2018 | DDC 701/.03--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018018396

Cover image: Otto Dix, The War [Der Krieg], oil and tempera on wood panel, 1928–1932, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden, Galerie Neue Meister. © Otto Dix / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo Art Resource, NY / Erich Lessing, used with permission.

Series cover design by Brent Meyers. Cover design by Peter Lang Ltd.

© Peter Lang AG 2019

Published by Peter Lang Ltd, International Academic Publishers,

52 St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LU, United Kingdom

oxford@peterlang.com, www.peterlang.com

Michael Mackenzie has asserted his right under the Copyright,

Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this Work.

All rights reserved.

All parts of this publication are protected by copyright.

Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution.

This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.

This publication has been peer reviewed.

About the author

Michael Mackenzie is Professor of Modern Art History at DePauw University. He holds a PhD from the University of Chicago. Significant publications include “From Athens to Berlin: The 1936 Olympics and Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia” (Critical Inquiry, Vol. 29) and, most recently, “Painters, Planners, and Bricklayers: Making the Social Circulate in Otto Nagel’s Young Bricklayer from the Stalinallee” (Centropa, Vol. 15, No. 2).

About the book

Informed by recent studies of collective remembrance, of camaraderie, and of the popular, working-class socialist groups that commemorated the war, this book takes Dix’s very public, monumental works out of the isolation of the artist’s studio and returns them to a context of public memorials, mass media depictions, and the communal search for meaning in the war. The author argues that Dix sought to establish a community of veterans through depictions of the war experience that used the soldier’s humorous, grotesque language of the trenches and that deliberately excluded women and other non-combatants. His depictions were preoccupied with heteronormativity in the context of intimate touch and tenderness between soldiers at the front and with sexual potency in the face of debilitating wounds suffered by others in the war.

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

Figures

Figure 1. Otto Dix, Metropolis [die Großstadt], left panel, 1928, mixed oil and tempera on wood, 540 × 300 cm, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. © Otto Dix / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Digital file: author’s own scan.

Figure 2. Otto Dix, The Trench [Schützengraben], oil on hessian, 1920–1923, lost, presumed destroyed. © Otto Dix / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo © Rheinisches Bildarchiv Cologne, rba_64673, used with permission.

Figure 3. Otto Dix, The War [Der Krieg], oil and tempera on wood panel, 1928–1932, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden, Galerie Neue Meister. © Otto Dix / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo Art Resource, NY / Erich Lessing, used with permission.

Figure 4. Otto Dix, Flanders [Flandern], oil and tempera on canvas, 1934–1936, Natonalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin: B 658. © Otto Dix / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo © akg-images / Jörg P. Anders, used with permission.←vii | viii→

Figure 5. Otto Dix, Self-Portrait as Soldier [Selbstbildnis als Soldat], oil on paper, 1914, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. © Otto Dix / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo © akg-images, used with permission.

Figure 6. Otto Dix, The War (The Artillery Piece) [Der Krieg (Das Geschütz)], oil on cardboard, 1914, Städtische Sammlung Düsseldorf. © Otto Dix / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo: author’s own scan.

Figure 7. Otto Dix, Self-Portrait as Mars [Selbstbildnis als Mars], oil on paper, 1915, Städtische Sammlungen Freital, Schloss Burgk. © Otto Dix / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo © akg-images, used with permission.

Figure 8. Otto Dix, Self-Portrait as Shooting Target [Selbstbildnis als Schießscheibe], oil on paper mounted on plywood, 1915, Otto Dix Stiftung, Vaduz. © Otto Dix / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Digital file: author’s own scan.

Figure 9. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Self-Portrait as Soldier [Selbstbildnis als Soldat], oil on canvas, 1915 Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College. Digital file: author’s own scan.

Figure 10. Otto Dix with Comrades, field postcard to his brother Fritz, 1916, Kunstsammlung Gera. © Otto Dix / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Digital file: author’s own scan.←viii | ix→

Figure 11. Otto Dix, Trenches in Front of Reims I [Gelände vor Reims I], gouache on paper, 1915 or 1916, private collection. © Otto Dix / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Digital file: author’s own scan.

Figure 12. Richard Jack, The Taking of Vimy Ridge, Easter Monday 1917, oil on canvas, 1919. CWM 19710261–0160, Beaverbrook Collection of War Art, Canadian War Museum. Photo: Canadian War Museum, used with permission.

Figure 13. Otto Dix, Soldier in a Trench [Soldat im Schützengraben], graphite and charcoal, 1916, Kunstmuseum Albstadt, Stiftung Sammlung Walter Groz, SWG 1976–554. © Otto Dix / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo © Kunstmuseum Albstadt, used with permission.

Figure 14. Otto Dix, Jägertrichter near Vimy ridge [Jägertrichter in Vimy], gouache, 1917, Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden, C1946-62. © Otto Dix / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photograph © Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden / Herbert Boswank, used with permission.

Figure 15. Otto Dix, Aubérive, graphite and charcoal, 1916, Kunstmuseum Albstadt, Stiftung Sammlung Walter Groz, SWG 1976–559. © Otto Dix / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo © Kunstmuseum Albstadt, used with permission.←ix | x→

Figure 16. Otto Dix, Ruins [Trümmer], red chalk on paper, 1915, Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden, C 1968–382. © Otto Dix / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo © Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden / Estel/Klut, used with permission.

Figure 17. Otto Dix, Shell Hole in a House [Granattrichter im Haus], graphite and charcoal, 1916, Kunstmuseum Albstadt, Stiftung Sammlung Walter Groz, SWG 1976–557. © Otto Dix / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo © Kunstmuseum Albstadt, used with permission.

Figure 18. Otto Schubert, Defense [Abwehr], lithograph on laid paper, 1917, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies. Photo © 2018 Museum Associates/ LACMA. Licensed by Art Resource, NY, used with permission.

Figure 19. Henri Camus, Charging for a hand-to-hand attack. Grenadiers of my squad (scared shitless) [Départ d’un coup de main. Grenadiers de mon escouade (la trouille aux fesses)] watercolor and pencil on paper, 1916–1917, La Contemporaine, Nanterre. Photo © La Contemporaine, Nanterre, used with permission.

Figure 20. Henri Camus, Seen at the bottom of the communication trench Desaix, without being able to stop and help [Vu au fond du boyau Desaix sans pouvoir s’arrêter pour l’aider], watercolor and pencil on paper, 1917, La Contemporaine, Nanterre. Photo © La Contemporaine, Nanterre, used with permission.←x | xi→

Figure 21. Otto Schubert, Battle Near Béthincourt, Dead Man’s Hill, Hill 304 [Schlacht bei Béthincourt, Höhe Toter Mann, Höhe 304], watercolor and pencil on paper, 1916, Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden, C 1973–17. © Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden / Herbert Boswank, used with permission.

Figure 22. Adolf Erbslöh, Ruins near Béthincourt [Ruinen von Béthincourt], oil on canvas, 1916–1917, Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, 0.1968.5586. Photo: © Museum Kunstpalast / Horst Kolberg / ARTOTHEK, used with permission.

Figure 23. Otto Schubert, Death [Tod], lithograph on laid paper, 1917, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies. © Otto Dix / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo © 2018 Museum Associates/ LACMA. Licensed by Art Resource, NY.

Figure 24. Otto Dix, The Assault [Das Hervorbrechen], charcoal on drawing paper, 1917, Kunstmuseum Albstadt, Stiftung Sammlung Walther Groz SWG 1985–22. © Otto Dix / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo © Kunstmuseum Albstadt, used with permission.

Figure 25. Otto Dix, Rows Falling in Machinegun Fire [Fallende Reihe im MG-Feuer], charcoal on drawing paper, 1916–1917, Otto Dix Stiftung, Vaduz. © Otto Dix / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Digital file: author’s own scan.←xi | xii→

Figure 26. Otto Dix, Flooded Barbed Wire [Überflutetes Drahtverhau], gouache, 1916, Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden, C 1946–63. © Otto Dix / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo © Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden / Estel/Klut, used with permission.

Figure 27. Otto Dix, Storm Troopers Advancing Under Gas [Sturmtruppe geht unter Gas vor] from The War [Der Krieg] (folio II, no. 12), etching, aquatint, and drypoint, 1924, Kunstmuseum Albstadt, Stiftung Sammlung Walther Groz SWG 1976–653. © Otto Dix / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo © Kunstmuseum Albstadt, used with permission.

Figure 28. Otto Dix, Great Black Birds [Große schwarze Vögel], ink on paper, 1918, Kunstmuseum Albstadt, 1980–103. © Otto Dix / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo © Kunstmuseum Albstadt, used with permission.

Figure 29. Otto Dix, Moon Woman [Mondweib], 1919, oil on canvas, frame painted by artist, 1919, National Gallery, Berlin. © Otto Dix / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Author’s own scan.

Figure 30. Otto Dix, Skat Players [Die Skatspieler], oil and collage on canvas, 1920, National Gallery, Berlin, FNG 74/95, property of the Association of Friends of the Nationalgalerie. © Otto Dix / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo © Joerg P. Anders / akg-images, used with permission.←xii | xiii→

Figure 31. Otto Dix, War Invalids, 45% Employable [Kriegskrüppel, 45% Erwerbsfähig!], oil and collage on canvas, 1920, lost. © Otto Dix / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo, akg-images, used with permission.

Figure 32. Otto Dix, Matchbook Seller [Streichholzhändler], oil and collage on canvas, 1920, Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart. © Otto Dix / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo akg-images, used with permission.

Figure 33. Otto Dix, Prager Strasse, oil and collage on canvas, 1920, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. © Otto Dix / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Photo © Alinari / akg-images, used with permission.

Details

Pages
XXVI, 422
Year
2019
ISBN (PDF)
9781788743341
ISBN (ePUB)
9781788743358
ISBN (MOBI)
9781788743365
ISBN (Hardcover)
9783034317238
DOI
10.3726/b13361
Language
English
Publication date
2019 (March)
Keywords
Grotesque Humor, Camaraderie and Remembrance Otto Dix First World War Remembrance
Published
Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, New York, Wien, 2019. XXVI, 422 pp., 9 fig. col., 66 fig. b/w

Biographical notes

Michael Mackenzie (Author)

Michael Mackenzie is Professor of Modern Art History at DePauw University. He holds a PhD from the University of Chicago. Significant publications include «From Athens to Berlin: The 1936 Olympics and Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia» (Critical Inquiry, Vol. 29) and, most recently, «Painters, Planners, and Bricklayers: Making the Social Circulate in Otto Nagel’s Young Bricklayer from the Stalinallee» (Centropa, Vol. 15, No. 2).

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