Friday, March 14, 2014
Council (Omni Shoreham)
By 1949 the political organization of West Germany as a democratic state was settled. However, the issue of creating of a corresponding democratic culture continued to be a subject of fierce debate. This paper analyzes the planning and reception of exhibitions of German expressionism at the Venice Biennale – a biannual, international art fair, from 1948 to 1952 – reading the exhibitions as a part of the cultural debate surrounding the creation of a West German culture in the wake of World War II and National Socialism. I argue that the Biennale supported the creation of new images of Germany abroad and at home, by resurrecting and rehabilitating the work of German expressionists, who had been condemned as “degenerate” and Jewish by the National Socialists. The exhibition of German expressionism presented a particularly avant-garde cultural view that defined German identity in terms of its relationship to a broader European identity. At home, the avant-garde position resurrected the German expressionists, but redefined them as the successors of French Impressionism and the creators of truly “democratic,” European, and German art. The avant-garde position stressed that German national culture could only succeed if it followed the example of the German expressionists and remained open to European culture. When placed into the context of an international art fair, this cultural view sought to normalize European relations through exhibitions of German expressionism. In short, the German contributions to the Biennale promoted a particularly European way of being West German.
