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| A NEW VIEW OF REALISM Dace Lamberga | |
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It is entirely logical that the First World War, which forced artists on both sides to take up arms, and took artists' lives on the battlefield, should also make an impression on the creative spirit. The depressing experience of the war is regarded as one of the prime reasons for an unmistakeable move towards harmony and balance in Western European art. The war acted as a brake on the development of Modernist movements, stifling for a time the craving in the first decade of the 20th century for merciless disruption of the accepted canons. Thus, in the early 20s, "good old" realism came to the forefront, appearing in diverse avant-garde guises. The post-war painters were particularly fanatical about fine detail, the kind characteristic of Caravaggio, Surbaran and the still lifes of the Dutch Old Masters, and equally fascinating in the romantic canvases of the English Pre-Raphaelites. In Italy, tempestuous Futurism was succeeded by the Novecento movement, rooted in classical canons, along with metaphysical painting. In their turn, influenced by the Italian example and by Albrecht Dürer and the 19th century Nazarites, the Germans created their Neue Sachlichkeit, or New Objectivity, which spawned as later offshoots the Dutch Magical Realism and American Precisionism. In the opinion of German art historian Günter Metken, "Cubism, Expressionism, Abstractionism and other "isms" had not only broadened the experience of reality, but had also unravelled it, even deliberately fragmenting it - similar to the way that in trench warfare the land and people were torn apart by a hail of steel. The consequence was a need for self-affirmation, for earth that was less shaky underfoot. There began a groping move back from the invented to the concrete."
In Latvian art of the early 20s, the movements of Classical Modernism developed differently from Western Europe, both in chronological and stylistic terms, since for the painters Uga Skulme, Oto Skulme, Valdemārs Tone and Jānis Liepiņš, literally hungering after creativity, it seemed a logical development of their lives to experience Cubism, which they had missed out on. On the other hand, Konrāds Ubāns, who had no "obligation" towards Cubism, was attracted sooner by the originality of this new kind of realism. At the same time, traditional realism with academic leanings also existed in Latvian painting, followed with conviction by Kārlis Miesnieks, Kārlis Brencēns and Jānis Roberts Tillbergs, the latter having become, in 1909, the last Latvian to graduate from the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg. Tillbergs was stubbornly devout in his support for the dogma of Academism, but if we compare the artificially staged portrait of actor Kristaps Linde (1923), painted à la German Renaissance, with the slightly stylised portrait of Arturs Bērziņš (1925), then we may even perceive quite contemporary features in the latter. Unluckily, up to 1932, Tillbergs, a forceful and domineering personality quite contemptuous of the creative spirit of modern art, headed the Department of Figural Painting at the Latvian Academy of Art. His students were forcibly subjected to a manner of painting that had been developed into a pre-conceived pattern. Blind, unconditional following in his footsteps meant that the graduates of the 20s included only rare individualistic figures. On the other hand, the vitality of the portraits and figural paintings of Ģederts Eliass, graduate of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, with a powerful use of colour developed from Fauvism, testified that Realism certainly did not represent some kind of emotionless fixity, but instead was a vehicle of expression for major personalities. Undeniably, in Western European art too, a tendency towards Academism existed in the 1920s and 30s, but nothing of this is on view today at museums and exhibitions, since nowadays works of this kind have been well and truly forgotten. On the other hand, Latvian art history, comparatively recent and with only a small number of artists, is very respectful towards all of its professionals. Thus, at the State Museum of Art exhibition "Realism. The New Objectivity. 1920s-30s", realism with academic leanings has largely been chosen to serve as a background, a contrast, in order to set off more clearly the new and unusual features characterising oil painting, watercolour and drawing from the 20s. In Germany, the term "New Objectivity" soon became accepted as a description of this second national movement in art after Expressionism, while in Latvia it was used very rarely. There is no doubt that examples from German art represented the dominant influence on these kinds of phenomena in Latvia, but use of the term itself may have been precluded in Latvia precisely because of the deprecatory attitude towards expressions of German culture during the post-war years. The drawings by Uga Skulme from the mid-20s in the cycle "Bible of the Poor", his portraits and figural works correspond absolutely with examples of New Objectivity, as recognised by German critics at the 1990 exhibition Unerwartete Begegnung. Lettische Avantgarde: 1910-1935 (‘Unexpected meeting. The Latvian avant-garde: 1910-1935') in West Berlin. However, in 1920s Latvia, such works were usually referred to by the term jaunreālisms ("New Realism"), and at the present day, the visual art of the New Objectivity is sometimes connected with Art Deco, which is familiar from the 1998 exhibition at the Museum of Decorative and Applied Arts. But these two phenomena are linked only in chronological terms, since the principles of decorative art were a development from Cubism, augmented with particular elements of contemporary Realism. What is it that sets apart New Objectivity, which emerged in German painting in the early 20s as a counter-reaction to the overwhelming dominance of Expressionism? The term itself was created and actively promoted by art researcher Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, curator of an exhibition in Mannheim in 1925 featuring works by Alexsander Kanoldt, Carlo Mense, Georg Scholz and Georg Schrimpf, where the New Objectivity trend predominated, fusing tradition and Modernism. The contemporary researcher Wieland Schmied refers to the movement as the "detached view", and this is excellently characterised by the cold, static view of the surrounding world seen in the portrait of Elizabete Skulme painted by Uga Skulme (1927). There is a complete absence of emotion, only a small dose of irony, dominant being the meticulously considered depiction of the woman's facial features, smooth hair, dress, dog and still life objects, all deprived of any materiality. Not only the inner fixity and the emphasis on line, but also the cool, grey palette indicate a serious appreciation of the most typical features of New Objectivity. While other Latvian painters did not strive to apply New Realism so consistently, nevertheless this tendency was generally very potent in the 20s. Certainly, the portraits of emancipated women by Aleksandra Beļcova ("Portrait of Austra Ozoliņa-Krauze", 1927) readily correspond to the models of New Objectivity, at the same time echoing the mannered features of Art Deco, in fashion at the time. It might seem that the strict principles of New Objectivity called for a professionally high standard of draughtsmanship, but in Germany self-taught artists were also successful in this movement, intuitively striving at carefully considered form and emphasis on line. Even in Latvian Art, we encounter a marked tendency towards Primitivism. Although Ansis Cīrulis can by no means be termed an autodidact, nevertheless, influenced by Italian Early Renaissance frescos, he did consciously stylise his work in a spirit of Primitivism, and was convinced that touching naïve work of this kind might serve as a concept of truly Latvian painting. Fascinating in terms of their unusual tenderness are the early paintings of Alberts Silzemnieks, a private pupil of Valdemārs Tone. In his scenes of suburban Riga and still life, all objects, whether newspapers or vessels, are rendered with particular diligence. The exhibition "Realism. New Objectivity" was envisaged as a deliberately restricted insight into art history, emphasising how stylistically diverse was the perception by various artists of realistic form of the kind where the main means of expression is a firm contour and pronounced linearity. It seems no doubts will arise as to what is realism, but New Objectivity is a less familiar term in Latvian art history, and the aim of the exhibition is to provide an acquaintance with these diverse phenomena in painting, from the Academism of Tillbergs up to the "stylish" reflections of natural reality presented by Uga Skulme. | |
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