Marking Modern Movement: Dance and Gender in the Visual Imagery of the Weimar Republic

Funkenstein, Susan

doi:doi:10.3998/mpub.11406286

Marking Modern Movement: Dance and Gender in the Visual Imagery of the Weimar Republic

Susan Funkenstein 2020

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Imagine yourself in Weimar Germany: you are visually inundated with depictions of dance. Perusing a women's magazine, you find photograph after photograph of leggy revue starlets, clad in sequins and feathers, coquettishly smiling at you. When you attend an art exhibition, you encounter Otto Dix's six-foot-tall triptych Metropolis, featuring Charleston dancers in the latest luxurious fashions, or Emil Nolde's watercolors of Mary Wigman, with their luminous blues and purples evoking her choreographies' mystery and expressivity. Invited to the Bauhaus, you participate in the Metallic Festival, and witness the school's transformation into a humorous, shiny, technological total work of art; you costume yourself by strapping a metal plate to your head, admire your reflection in the tin balls hanging from the ceiling, and dance the Bauhaus' signature step in which you vigorously hop and stomp late into the night.

Yet behind the razzle dazzle of these depictions and experiences was one far more complex involving issues of gender and the body during a tumultuous period in history, Germany's first democracy (1918-1933). Rather than mere titillation, the images copiously illustrated and analyzed in Marking Modern Movement illuminate how visual artists and dancers befriended one another and collaborated together. In many ways because of these bonds, artists and dancers forged a new path in which images revealed artists' deep understanding of dance, their dynamic engagement with popular culture, and out of that, a possibility of representing women dancers as cultural authorities to be respected. Through six case studies, Marking Modern Movement explores how and why these complex dynamics occurred in ways specific to their historical moment.

Extensively illustrated and with color plates, Marking Modern Movement is a clearly written book accessible to general readers and undergraduates. Coming at a time of a growing number of major art museums showcasing large-scale exhibitions on images of dance, the audience exists for a substantial general-public interest in this topic. Conversing across German studies, art history, dance studies, gender studies, and popular culture studies, Marking Modern Movement is intended to engage readers coming from a wide range of perspectives and interests.

Series

Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany

ISBN(s)

978-0-472-05461-9 (paper)
978-0-472-07461-7 (hardcover)
978-0-472-12708-5 (ebook)

Subject

Citable Link

Filtering by: Keyword social dancing

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Two black-and-white photos side by side in a magazine article on the Charleston, instructing German readers on how to dance. A dancing couple in a suit and dress display the X-shape of the legs, the couple hold, and the upright carriage of the torso. The images show this from two different angles. Text instructions sit below the images.

“The basic position of the Charleston step" and "The slow Charleston step with bent knee" (Die Grundstellung beim Charlestonschritt" "Der langsame Charlestonschritt mit gebogenem Knie")

From Chapter 4

“The Basic Position of the Charleston Step” and “The Slow Charleston Step with Bent Knee” (Die Grundstellung beim Charlestonschritt” “Der langsame Charlestonschritt mit gebogenem Knie”), in Katharina Rathaus, “The Charleston: Every Age Has the Dance It Deserves” (“Charleston. Jede Zeit hat den Tanz, den sie verdient),” Uhu 3:1 (October 1926): 122. Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany. bpk Bildagentur / Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany / Dietmar Katz / Art Resource, NY

Otto Dix painting portraying himself at the center of the composition, holding a telephone. He looks steely eyed and wears a trim, pale green suit. He stands in the foreground in a jazz dance hall with a female mannequin bust in an ornate costume at his side. Behind him to the left is a dancing couple (who isn’t actually dancing) wearing a suit and sparkly dress, and to the right next to him is a black jazz drummer wearing a suit and actively drumming on a set with a depiction of a Native American person on its front. Behind the drummer, another female mannequin stands with an anxious expression. In the very back of the room are some columns and another figure entering.

To Beauty (An die Schönheit)

From Chapter 5

Otto Dix, To Beauty (An die Schönheit), 1922. Oil on canvas. 140 × 122 cm. Von-der-Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal, Germany. Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY. © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Inside cover of an Elegante Welt magazine issue depicting an afternoon dance tea, in which the man holds his female partner so as to show off her fashionable dress. Six people in the image, most of whom are seated at tables and/or looking away, surround them. One woman in a hat and dress looks toward the woman. The image is a black-and-white illustration. The magazine title and issue information are lined up along the top of the page above the image; the image’s title is below. All text is in German.

The Tea-Dance (“Der Tanz-Tee”), Elegante Welt 8:3 (January 29, 1919)

From Chapter 5

“The Tea-Dance” (“Der Tanz-Tee”), Elegante Welt 8:3 (January 29, 1919), inside title page. Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany. bpk Bildagentur / Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany / Art Resource, NY

The left panel of the painting Metropolis, depicting working-class prostitutes sauntering away from the viewer under a brick and metal bridge and past a wounded war veteran on a cobblestone road. The prostitutes are wearing brightly colored dresses, while the veteran wears a faint green outfit with peg legs and crutches. A crazed dog barks at the veteran and a faint figure shows behind the brick underpass of the bridge.

Metropolis (Großstadt), left panel

From Chapter 5

Otto Dix, Metropolis (Großstadt), 1927/28. Tempera on wood panel. left and right panels: 181 × 101 cm; center panel: 181 × 201 cm. Kunstmuseum, Stuttgart, Germany. Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

The center panel of the painting Metropolis, depicting a fashionable jazz club. A woman in green dances the Charleston in the center; a woman in coral and yellow holding a large pink fan poses on the right. A suited jazz band plays on the left, and well-dressed patrons, covered in jewels and ornate brocades, watch the dancing.

Metropolis (Großstadt), center panel

From Chapter 5

The right panel of the painting Metropolis, depicting nine prostitutes catering to upper-class men. They wear lavish furs and elaborate hairstyles, each wearing brightly colored clothing and headpieces as well. They walk toward the viewer and past ornate architecture and ignore a wounded war veteran who sits on the floor, wearing a faint green outfit with his face in his hand.

Metropolis (Großstadt), right panel

From Chapter 5

A page from the social dance issue of Elegante Welt, two illustrations of strappy shoes fill the center of a page: one illustration is an oval shape with a black background and the other, laid over the bottom of the oval, is a diamond shape with a black outline and white background. The shoes resemble the fashionable ones in Dix’s Metropolis painting. In the bottom corners of the page are blocks of German editorial text.

Detail of shoe designs

From Chapter 5

Detail of shoe designs, Elegante Welt, annual dance issue, 16:2 (January 25, 1927): 4. Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany. bpk Bildagentur / Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany / Art Resource, NY

A page from the social dance issue of Elegante Welt with an illustration of women’s dance fashions that resemble the fashions in Dix’s Metropolis. The illustration takes up most of the page and has a group of three women chatting on the right, black space in the center, and a woman and man standing on the left. All of the women are wearing different white dresses with decorations on them, while the man, who is only halfway in the image, wears a suit. Below the image is German editorial text.

“Dress Show on the Dance Floor” (“Toiletten Schau auf dem Tanzparkett”)

From Chapter 5

“Dress Show on the Dance Floor” (“Toiletten Schau auf dem Tanzparkett”), Elegante Welt, annual dance issue, 16:2 (January 25, 1927): 14. Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany. bpk Bildagentur / Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany / Art Resource, NY

Sepia photograph from the Bauhaus’s Metallic Festival that focuses on the social dance floor. Five pairs dance in closed couple holds; each couple is costumed in metallic clothes and accessories. Shiny objects hang from the ceiling, and the walls are covered with metallic sheets. There is tinsel scattered over the floor and the room is half-empty.

Metallic Party (Metallisches Fest), about 1929, Gelatin silver print, 8.9 x 13.8 cm (3 ½ x 5 7/16 in). Sheet: 11.4 x 17.4 cm (4 ½ x 6 7/8 in.)

From Chapter 6

Rudolph Binnemann, Metallic Party (Metallisches Fest), ca. 1929. Gelatin silver print. 8.7 × 13.9 cm (3 7/16 × 5½ in). The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

An invitation to the Metallic Festival made of shiny metallic sheet with orange and black stamped over it, the metallic complementing the theme of the festival. Bold black lettering on diagonals names the festival; a big number 9 highlights February 9th, 1929, the date of the event.

Invitation to the Metallic Festival: A Festival of Bells: Bauhaus-Carnival at the Bauhaus in Dessau (Metallisches Fest: Glocken-Schellen-Klingel-Fest: Bauhaus-Fasching im Bauhaus in Dessau, 9. Febr. 1929), February 9, 1929

From Chapter 6

Metallic Festival: A Festival of Bells: Bauhaus-Carnival at the Bauhaus in Dessau, February 9, 1929 (Metallisches Fest: Glocken-Schellen-Klingel-Fest: Bauhaus-Fasching im Bauhaus in Dessau, 9. Febr. 1929), February 9, 1929. 11 × 15 cm. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles

Marking Modern Movement: Dance and Gender in the Visual Imagery of the Weimar Republic

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“The basic position of the Charleston step" and "The slow Charleston step with bent knee" (Die Grundstellung beim Charlestonschritt" "Der langsame Charlestonschritt mit gebogenem Knie")

To Beauty (An die Schönheit)

The Tea-Dance (“Der Tanz-Tee”), Elegante Welt 8:3 (January 29, 1919)

Metropolis (Großstadt), left panel

Metropolis (Großstadt), center panel

Metropolis (Großstadt), right panel

Detail of shoe designs

“Dress Show on the Dance Floor” (“Toiletten Schau auf dem Tanzparkett”)

Metallic Party (Metallisches Fest), about 1929, Gelatin silver print, 8.9 x 13.8 cm (3 ½ x 5 7/16 in). Sheet: 11.4 x 17.4 cm (4 ½ x 6 7/8 in.)

Invitation to the Metallic Festival: A Festival of Bells: Bauhaus-Carnival at the Bauhaus in Dessau (Metallisches Fest: Glocken-Schellen-Klingel-Fest: Bauhaus-Fasching im Bauhaus in Dessau, 9. Febr. 1929), February 9, 1929

Metallic Party (Metallisches Fest)

[Two Female Students in Cylinder Costume], about 1925-1926

Self Portrait with Jewelry for the Metallic Festival (Selbstportrait mit Schmuck zum Metallischen Fest)

Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (Berlin, die Symphonie der Großstadt)