The image of Berlin in the works of “New objectivity” artists of the 1920-s

Abstract

The article deals with the works of new objectivity artists, which reflect Berlin urban life of the 1920s. The author analyses the works by G. Grosz, R. Schlichter, K. Hubbuch, O. Dix, G. Wunderwald devoted to urban themes within the period of their residence in the capital of Weimar Germany. Being in ideological opposition to expressionism both as a style and worldview, the above-mentioned authors created in their works a different image of Berlin, filled not with subjective experiences and impressions, but rather constructed from the  “objective” features of the metropolitan life. In their effort to record the surrounding reality, the artists critically approached the choice of urban life’s subjects, preferring mainly themes of social and critical orientation. In this regard, against the backdrop of left-wing ideas, artists were tend to depict the problems of class inequality, social insecurity, poverty, prostitution, which clearly manifested themselves in Berlin life of the 1920s. Thus, artists turned into a kind of painters of everyday life scenes of the metropolis and captured in their works not only the life and views of the central, most famous and attractive Berlin areas, but also its most unsightly industrial suburbs, where the underclass lived. In the course of the  analysis, the author reveals the aesthetics intrinsic to the most of the works under consideration – the so-called aesthetics of the “ugliness”.