Review of Lotte Laserstein: Face to Face at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt

19/11/18

Lotte Laserstein: Face to Face

Städel Museum, Frankfurt
19 September 2018 – 17 March 2019

Face to face. An appropriate title for an exhibition so largely comprised of portraits – among them a large proportion of self-portraits. For, surrounded by these canvases of Lotte Laserstein (1898-1993), one feels beset by myriad pairs of eyes. She is usually categorised as an artist of Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), alongside her male contemporaries Otto Dix, George Grosz and Christian Schad, but her style is really quite different from theirs – devoid of political satire and containing far more empathy, intimacy, and, dare I say it at the risk of sounding disingenuous, femininity. 

Laserstein grew up in a very female environment, with her mother, her sister, Käte, and her aunt and grandmother, following the death of her father in 1902. Fortunately, there was enough family money for both daughters to study and Laserstein was one of the first generation of women accepted into the Berlin Art Academy, in 1921 – two large charcoal drawings of male nudes evidence that she also attended life classes while there. Bear in mind that she was painting at the same time as, for example, the artists of the expressionist group, Die Brücke, and her style might seem a little old fashioned and venerating of art history – “more academy than avant garde”, as Kolja Reichert wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (23 September 2018). One hypothesis put forward by the exhibition texts is that, belonging to this first generation of educated female artists, she lacked the rebellious streak of many of her male contemporaries, wishing instead to prove her technical ability. Vermeer, for example, was one artist she openly declared to be a great influence on her, and aspects of the Dutch master’s style can be detected, especially, perhaps, in her choice of palette.

Read the full review here

Review of Portraying a Nation: Germany 1919–1933 at Tate Liverpool

24/07/17

Portraying a Nation: Germany 1919–1933

Tate Liverpool
23 June – 15 October 2017

In its 14 years (1919-33), the Weimar Republic – as the newly established German state was unofficially known – faced numerous problems, including hyperinflation, unemployment, political extremism (with paramilitaries – both left- and rightwing), and troubled relationships with the victors of the first world war. It was also, however, as is common in such periods, an era of remarkable cultural renaissance, a boom time for clubs and bars, and a phase of great creativity in terms of literature, cinema, theatre and music. Visual artists, too, responded to the sociopolitical climate, with Otto Dix (1891-1969) in particular combining realism and criticality with his singular artistic vision to produce paintings showing the manifold extremes of this tumultuous interwar period.

For this dual exhibition at Tate Liverpool, a selection of Dix’s work, primarily from his years in Düsseldorf between 1922-25, and including his barren series of 50 etchings The War (1924), is set against more than 140 photographs from the Artist Rooms collection of photographer August Sander’s monumental project, People of the 20th Century. Photographing subjects from all walks of life, and later categorising them according to his self-devised, ever-evolving system, Sander (1876-1964) produced an incomparable record – or collective portrait – of a nation in flux. Shown here chronologically, alongside an informative textual timeline, the gelatin silver prints set the sociopolitical backdrop against which Dix’s dramas, across the hall, play out. While each exhibition is strong enough – and large enough – to stand alone, together they provide a comprehensive and fantastic insight into the life and times, the ups and downs, and the joys and horrors, of the Weimar Republic.

Read this review here