George Grosz (American, born Germany, 1893-1959). For German Right and German Morals (Für Deutsches Recht und Deutsche Sitte), 1919. Lithograph, Sheet: 25 1/16 x 18 5/8 in. (63.7 x 47.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Dr. F. H. Hirschland, 55.165.143

Cynicism and disillusionment with the government and militarism permeates the work of George Grosz, an incisive caricaturist, satirist, and one of the most influential graphic artists to be associated with Expressionism, New Objectivity, and Dada. An ardent communist and supporter of the working class, Grosz expressed his disdain for the right wing capitalist and military ruling classes in a caustic portfolio of lithographs he made after WWI ironically titled God With Us after the nationalistic motto inscribed on every German soldier’s belt buckle. The print For German Right and German Morals (German Soldiers to the Front) (55.165.143) presents five brutish, malevolent, and corrupt specimens of the German military; the squat and thuggish officer in the center, whose holster makes obvious reference to his genitals, crushes a flower under his boot.

And in The Communists Fall and Foreign Exchange Rises (Blood is the Best Sauce)(X1041), another repulsive officer enjoys a genteel meal with a bloated war profiteer, one carving his meat and the other delicately dabbing at a stain on his shirt, while behind them a mob of vicious soldiers wield their bayonets to kill unarmed workers. Grosz based some of these lithographs on drawings he made while a patient in a mental hospital during the war, claiming he wanted to retain “everything that was laughable and grotesque in my environment.” When Grosz exhibited the portfolio at the First International Dada Fair in Berlin in 1920, he was accused, tried, and found guilty of defaming the military. Like Max Beckmann, Grosz would immigrate to the United States, arriving in New York in 1933.

George Grosz (American, born Germany, 1893-1959). The Communists Fall and Foreign Exchange Rises, 1919. Photo-transfer lithograph, Sheet: 18 9/16 x 24 7/8 in. (47.1 x 63.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Museum Collection, X1041

Otto Dix noted that “War was something horrible, but nonetheless something powerful…Under no circumstances could I miss it!” But the epic destruction and trauma of modern mechanical warfare and its aftermath was soon made starkly apparent to him.

Otto Dix (German, 1891-1969). Card Players (Kartenspieler), 1920. Drypoint on heavy wove paper, Image (Plate): 12 13/16 x 11 1/8 in. (32.5 x 28.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Dr. F.H. Hirschland, 55.165.66. © artist or artist’s estate

After the war, Germany’s streets were filled with one and a half million wounded and crippled soldiers. Dix, who fought as a machine gunner on the Western Front, depicts three such figures in his print Card Players (55.165.66). Here, the war’s capacity for bodily devastation and disintegration is sharply delineated: a mechanical jaw and hand, a patch covering a missing nose, an unseeing glass eye, an ear tube emerging directly from a misshapen skull. Between the three men there is only a single shirt-sleeved and cuff-linked leg; like the other soldier’s mouth it has been repurposed to hold cards. The other prosthetic “legs” and the contraption supporting the torso of the figure on the left are nearly indistinguishable from the chair and table legs. These figures play cards (and smoke cigars!) like they may have done before the war, but in this image of truncated, mechanized men, Dix shows how the war machine remade the world in its own image.

Käthe Kollwitz (German, 1867–1945). The Mothers (Die Mütter), 1922–23. Woodcut on heavy Japan paper, 18 13/16 x 25 9/16 in. (47.8 x 64.9 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Carll H. de Silver Fund, 44.201.6. © 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bon

She explored the physical and spiritual dimensions of the human condition primarily through printmaking, a populist medium that resonated with German artists eager to renew the tradition of Northern Renaissance masters such as Albrecht Dürer. The powerful black and white woodcuts and lithographs on view, drawn from two of her major print portfolios, War (Kreig) (1922–23) and Death (Tod) (1934–35), are intensely personal yet universal expressions of devastation, loss, and grief made in response to the horrors of World War I and the early years of National Socialism.

Kollwitz’s works are part of the Brooklyn Museum’s significant collection of prints by artists associated with the German Expressionist and New Objectivity movements, such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Georg Grosz, and many others.

Max Beckmann (German, 1884-1950). Weeping Woman (Weinende Frau), 1914. Drypoint on heavy wove paper, Image: 9 1/4 x 7 5/16 in. (23.5 x 18.6 cm). Brooklyn Museum, By exchange, 38.257. © artist or artist’s estate

The first prints entered the collection in 1937 and were the subject of an exhibition here in 1948, making Brooklyn among the very first major American museums to acquire and present this material (when it was considered contemporary art), a bold move during a period when anti-German sentiment still ran high in the States. The excitement generated by our current presentation of the rarely seen Kollwitz prints seems like a good excuse for a two-part post highlighting some of our other German war-related prints from this era.

Weeping Woman by Max Beckmann (German, 1884-1950) (38.257), who suffered a mental breakdown after serving in the medical corps, depicts a woman bringing a handkerchief to her eyes, which appear black and hollow under a mourning veil. Made in the first year of the war, it is thought to be a portrait of the artist’s mother-in-law who, like Kollwitz, lost her son in battle. Beckmann would immigrate to the United States in 1947 and taught for several years at The Brooklyn Museum Art School (which closed in 1985).

Christian Rohlfs (German, 1849-1939). The Prisoner (Der Gefangene), 1918. Color woodcut in blue and overpainted by the artist, on gray wove paper, Image: 25 x 19 1/2 in. (63.5 x 49.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Carll H. de Silver Fund, 65.161

In Christian Rohlfs’ (German, 1849-1939) woodcut The Prisoner (65.161), the rough wood grain texture and heavy lines that articulate the subject’s gaunt face, tense hands, and emaciated body, convey the physical immediacy and force of the artist’s hand. The figure seems to be less a specific POW intern than a despairing manifestation of spiritual and emotional imprisonment in a desolate postwar landscape.

Ernst Barlach (German, 1870-1938). Kneeling Woman with Dying Child (Kniende Frau mit sterbenden Kind), 1919. Woodcut on laid paper, Image: 9 x 12 5/8 in. (22.9 x 32.1 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Dr. F.H. Hirschland, 55.165.76
Image: overall, 55.165.76_bw_IMLS.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph

Ernst Barlach (German, 1870-1938) was a close friend of Kollwitz and shared with her a preoccupation with universal themes of human existence and tragedy. In his nightmarish woodcut Kneeling Woman with Dying Child (55.165.76), a withered woman attempts to breastfeed a starving infant, their angular figures merging with the surrounding spiky and barren landscape. Although it calls to mind a medieval emblem of Famine, Barlach’s image is rooted in the reality of the food shortages that occurred in rural Germany after the war.

Hogarth was an English painter and printmaker who took as his subject no less than the panorama of life in 18^th-century London. From the drawing rooms of the aristocracy to the teeming and raucous city streets, Hogarth trained his critical eye on themes of marriage, adultery, prostitution, religion, disease, poverty, crime, drunkenness, insanity, gambling, commerce, and, of course, politics, creating indelible images that are spiked with humor and pathos, and brimming with narrative details.

For his four Election series prints (published in 1757-58 and based on his paintings dated 1754-55), Hogarth turned his attention from the squalor of urban life to the corruption of the political world. He was inspired by the notorious contest between the liberal Whig party and the conservative Tory party to win Oxfordshire’s parliamentary seats in the General Election of 1754. Set in the fictional country town of ‘Guzzledown,’ Hogarth depicts four stages of an election, each of which is filled with acts of bribery, mayhem, wastefulness, and venality; in short, a catalogue of behaviors and traits associated with winning by any means and at all costs.

William Hogarth (British, 1697-1764). An Election Entertainment from "Four Prints of an Election," 1755. Engraving on laid paper, 17 1/8 x 21 15/16 in. (43.5 x 55.8 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Samuel E. Haslett, 22.1875 Image: overall, 22.1875_bw.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph.

The first scene, An Election Entertainment, presents a boisterous banquet organized by the Whig party in an attempt to wine and dine their way to victory. Deliberately parodying the composition of the Last Supper, Hogarth has squeezed his characters around two tables. The two candidates are seated next to each other at the left, one enduring a kiss from a toothless old woman and the other in the rough grip of two drunken men. At the right the local mayor has collapsed and is being bled after consuming too many oysters. Near him is an election agent who has been struck on the head by a brick thrown through the window by the Tory mob protesting outside.

William Hogarth (British, 1697-1764). Canvassing for Votes, from "Four Prints of an Election," 1755. Engraving Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Samuel E. Haslett, 22.1890 Image: overall, 22.1890_bw.jpg. Photo Indianapolis Museum of Art.

In Canvassing for Votes, the second scene, the action takes place outside the Royal Oak inn, the Tory party headquarters. The inn’s sign has been partly covered by another sign that lampoons the Whig candidate, depicting him as the commedia dell’arte character Punch pushing a wheelbarrow full of coins he’s distributing to voters. Ironically, just beneath this sign stands the Tory candidate buying knick-knacks with which to bribe the girls flirting with him from the inn’s balcony, as well as a farmer being solicited simultaneously by political operatives from both parties.

William Hogarth (British, 1697-1764). The Polling from Four Print of an Election, 1758. Engraving on laid paper, 17 3/16 x 21 15/16 in. (43.7 x 55.8 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Samuel E. Haslett, 22.1892. Photo Indianapolis Museum of Art.

The Polling is the third scene of the series and depicts the varied crowd of voters at the polling stand with the two candidates seated on chairs at the back of the platform beneath their party flags. Each side tries to extract votes from whomever they can, while disputing the other side’s right to do the same. The Tories try to get the vote of a seated man with clearly diminished mental faculties, the Whigs carry up a man in a white shroud who is either dying or already dead, and one of the parties’ lawyers appears to challenge a one-legged veteran’s right to swear his oath with the metal hook that has replaced his hand. In the background, a carriage emblazoned with Britannia’s flag topples over while the two coachmen obliviously play cards, further emphasizing the message that political negligence and mismanagement have imperiled the nation.

William Hogarth (British, 1697-1764). Chairing the Members from Four Prints of an Election, 1758. Engraving on laid paper, 17 3/16 x 21 7/8 in. (43.7 x 55.6 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Samuel E. Haslett, 22.1891. Photo Indianapolis Museum of Art.

The theme of collapse continues in the riotous final scene, Chairing the Members, which shows the successful Tory candidates triumphantly carried through the streets. Led by a blind fiddler and surrounded by a chaotic crowd of people and animals, the central winner is about to fall as one of his bearers has been inadvertently hit in the head by another brawling supporter.

Although many of the allusions in the Election series prints presuppose an insider’s knowledge of the politics, procedures, and characters of the time, Hogarth’s witty and scathing take on the craziness that can surround the democratic process is timeless.

Roman. Double Cosmetic Tube, 4th-5th century C.E. Glass, 5 1/8 x 1 1/16 x 1 7/8 in. (13 x 2.7 x 4.7 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Robert B. Woodward, 01.123.

Looking through our ancient holdings, my attention was immediately caught by the blown glass vessels used to hold perfumes, ointments, or eye makeup (kohl). These so-called cosmetic tubes have been found mainly in tombs, giving rise to the highly romantic and almost certainly false belief that they were used to collect the tears of mourners. They are thus sometimes referred to as lachrymatories—an erroneous historical designation that nonetheless creates an imaginative link between them and Othoniel’s work called Lagrimas (Tears), a collection of jars filled with small glass shapes floating in water.

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His series of untitled blown-glass sculptures that hang from the gallery ceiling like overripe, seductive fruit also bear a distinct resemblance to these elongated and biomorphically-shaped  cosmetic tubes. I wonder too if Othoniel had these ancient vessels in mind when he designed the new limited-edition bottle for Dior’s perfume, J’Adore.  With its pendulous shape and spiraling trail of glass, this contemporary perfume bottle would not appear out of place among the toilette items of a wealthy 4^th century C.E. Roman woman!

Roman. Double Cosmetic Tube with Ribbon Handles, 4th-6th century C.E. Glass, 3 1/8 x 1 1/8 x 5 1/16 in. (8 x 2.9 x 12.9 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Robert B. Woodward, 01.370.

The glass ribbons looped along the sides or encircling many of these cosmetic tubes might have been functional as well as decorative. Oils were an important component of ancient perfumes and makeup and this raised ornamentation would facilitate a grasp on what could become a slick surface.

Roemer, 1680-1700. Colorless glass, height: 9 9/16 in. (24.3 cm);. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wunsch Foundation, Inc., 2001.94.1.

A similar strategy is in play on this seventeenth-century roemer, a drinking glass common in Germany and the Netherlands (and frequently depicted in Dutch still-life paintings). Its base is punctuated by a series of textured glass beads called prunts that make a pleasing contrast to the smooth bowl. In an era when forks were not used regularly and cup handles weren’t common, prunts would help greasy hands maintain a grip on slippery glass. They remind me of permanent finger prints marking the spots where glass came in contact with flesh.

Nearly all of Othoniel’s works are informed by the aura or trace of a body: the oversized necklace as bodily surrogate, the implied occupant of an empty bed, glass shaped (or “wounded”) by a glassblower’s breath and touch. In this way, his poetic works resonate with centuries-old vessels and their intimate sensory connections to the long-vanished bodies that once held and used them.

Greenfield-Sanders turned to a beautiful wooden 8” x 10” Deardorff view camera from the 1930s, fitted with a modern lens, which he used to shoot The Latino List.

In 1978, Greenfield-Sanders started shooting with an antique 11” x 14” view camera. Film for that format was discontinued around 2000 and Greenfield-Sanders turned to a beautiful wooden 8” x 10” Deardorff view camera from the 1930s, fitted with a modern lens, which he used to shoot The Latino List. The technical procedure, which weds vintage apparatus to modern technology, is relatively straightforward: first, he loads the camera with 8” x 10” color negative film—one plate at a time—and, from the only six or so shots captured in the sitting, he selects the negative he wants to print. Using a drum scanner, he generates a 600 MB scan file from the negative, which is digitally cleaned up only for dirt and spots. The scan is then printed on 44 inch wide Epson UltraSmooth paper, retaining the characteristic black borders and notches on the upper left edge that denote the 8” x 10” format.

Greenfield-Sanders on the Latino List set with Pitbull.

Greenfield-Sanders loves the look and feel of large-format photography, particularly how the technique’s typically shallow depth of field focuses attention on the sitter’s face, fostering a sense of stillness, as well as the directness and intimacy that he seeks to capture in his portraits. Apart from its technical capabilities, the physical camera itself plays an important role in Greenfield-Sanders’s work as a portraitist. Sitters are intrigued or amused by the imposing antique camera—some have asked if it belonged to (19th-century photographer) Matthew Brady! Greenfield-Sanders finds that this curiosity about the object, with its rich historical presence, goes a long way toward dissipating any tension even celebrities might feel while having their portrait taken.  So too does the fact that, unlike other photographers whose faces remain semi-hidden behind the camera, Greenfield-Sanders stands next to his.  Once the shot is framed, photographer and subject can talk face to face and develop a relaxed and personal connection, creating the mood for the right picture to happen.

A future blog post will take a more detailed look at the different projects and a behind-the-scenes look at their installations, but first we want to reach out to our online community on behalf of one of the participating artists, Mary Lucier. She is descended from a Dutch family from the same 17^th century colonial period as the original occupants of the Brooklyn Museum’s Schenck Houses, where her works will be installed. For part of her project, Lucier wants to add a few new branches to her family tree.  If you are a Brooklynite from WAY back, Mary Lucier wants to hear from you:

Joris Jansen de Rapalje and Catalyntje Trico and…you?

During the 1600s and 1700s, severe persecution and even massacres by Catholics, forced many Huguenots (French Protestants) to leave Europe for what was then “New Netherland,” an area including Manhattan, Brooklyn, and land farther up the Hudson River.  Included in this migration were numerous Dutch families as well, and as they established life in various colonies, they began to intermarry.

The Terpenning family, Dryden, New York area, c. 1895. Sarah Rapalje's 6th and 7th great grandchildren. Photograph courtesy of Drew Campbell.

In 1624, a young refugee couple, both around 19 years old, left Amsterdam aboard the Eendracht, bound for New York harbor.  Their names were Joris Jansen de Rapalje and Catalyntje Trico.  Upon arriving in New York, they sailed up river to found a new colony, which would eventually become Albany.  After hardships and skirmishes with the Mohawks, the Rapaljes decided to return to New York two years later, settling in Wallabout, an area in what is now Brooklyn. They brought with them an infant girl named Sarah, reputed to be the first European child born in New Netherland (1625).

Sarah married twice (once to Hans Hansen Bergen, who died at age 27, and then to Teunis Bogeart) and had a total of 15 children, setting in motion a vast lineage of descendants that includes Humphrey Bogart, Tom Brokaw, Gov. Howard Dean, myself, and possibly you!  By now there are estimated to be at least a million descendants of these lines, many of whom may know little about their Dutch/Huguenot ancestry and nothing about the people to which they are purportedly related.

For my “activation” in the Schenck Houses of the Museum’s Period Rooms, I will create a mixed-media video and sound environment that will investigate the subject of cultural identity through a personal exploration of my own ancestry, using recorded performances in situ, references to literature and other historic texts (including various family trees such as the Schencks), and audience participation.

To that end, I am appealing to all Rapaljes, Rapeljes, Raplees, and all descendants (regardless of the name) to send me information that I may use in my museum installation.  Please let me know your particular connection or line of descent and please send a high-quality photograph (tiffs or jpegs only please; I can’t use or return original prints) of yourself, your grandparents, family groups, whoever you like, for me to display on the mantel in one of the Museum’s period rooms.  Please also indicate that you give me, Mary Lucier, and the Brooklyn Museum, permission to use these photos for this purpose.

Please send all material to marluc@aol.com.

iMac kiosks in The Latino List that record video reaction from visitors.

We are also super excited to see how visitors to The Latino List create their own “speaking portraits” at the exhibition’s community voice kiosk, an interactive that was such a successful part of The Black List exhibition that we knew we had to offer it again.  During The Black List visitors were invited to record on-the-spot videos of their response to the question: “How has race made an impact on your life and accomplishments?”  Videos were published to the museum’s YouTube channel and the best of them could also be viewed in the gallery during the course of the exhibition.  I was blown away by the candor, humor, pride, anger, and power in these videos.  One of the most fascinating things about the responses was their diversity and range.  Not only did each individual naturally have their own personal take on the question, but people reflected on how their own race is perceived and experienced as well as how they perceive and experience people of other races.

For The Latino List we wanted to elicit similarly inclusive and reciprocal responses, so the question we pose to visitors this time—in English and Spanish—is: “How has your culture shaped your life and accomplishments? (¿Qué impacto ha tenido su cultura en su vida y en sus logros?). The word “culture” conjures family and community traditions, and certainly one of the things that unite the stories shared by the Latino List participants is the impact and influences that family and tradition have had on their lives and identities.  The word evokes a range of concepts, from race to religion to heritage, without being  limiting or exclusionary: everyone comes from a culture of some kind, whether they abandon it or embrace it, and it shapes the way they experience the world and, to some extent, for better or worse, the way the world experiences them.

This time, we’re expanding the interactive to include not just visitors to the gallery, but anyone, anywhere, through a bilingual iPhone app.  You can record your video response directly on your iPhone, upload it to The Latino List YouTube channel, learn about the exhibition, and watch videos made by other people.

As always, we want to hear from you:  download the app, come to The Latino List, and make a video to share your thoughts about your culture and experiences.