Few artists are as known for their graphic images of war or their "caustic portraits of German post-war society"[i] as painter, Otto Dix. Born in 1891 in Untermhaus, Germany, Dix was interested in the arts from an early age. He followed in a similar path as many earlier Expressionists by moving to Dresden in 1910 where he studied at the School of Arts and Crafts. It was here, in the birthplace of Die Brucke (The Bridge), that Dix became heavily influenced by the Expressionistic gestural style as well as the philosophical of ideals of Nietzsche.[ii] Despite his growing interest in art, Dix volunteered as a machine gunner shortly after war was declared in 1915. He served in the entirety of WWI until its end in 1918, even though he was wounded several times on the field of battle. After being stationed in the trenches of the Western Front and witnessing the horrific brutality which took place there, Dix "emerged with a scathing view of mankind"[iii] at the end of his service. Following the war, Dix settled back in Dresden to continue his artistic studies. Although his work maintained Expressionistic aspects, he began to usher in a new movement along with George Grosz (1893-1959) called Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). Dix executed his unique form of social commentary as he "unsentimentally examined the decadence and underlying social inequality of post-war German Society."[iv] When compared to Kirchner as the prototype for Expressionism, Dix’s paintings lacked the impasto, strong juxtapositions or abstracted forms. Nonetheless, his works still captured the essence of Expressionism. Dix’s subjects--despite their heightened realism--are distorted to mere caricatures, his finely painted lines slice upon the canvas enhancing the angles of his figures and his environments capture the same menacing presence. Furthermore, the artistic nature of Dix’s war imagery is clearly influenced by Gothic master and Expressionist forefather, Matthias Grünewald (1470-1528). He may have been a founding father of Neue Sachlichkeit, but Dix was Expressionist to his core. Dix first received notoriety for his ability to turn a “clinical eye on the world and record its misery and pain with unreserved accuracy”[v] in his painting, War Cripples . By this time he Felt repelled by the sight of ex-soldiers exposing their deformations in the street. They became, for him, a symbol of the disillusionment engendered by the war, which he had initially greeted with such bull-necked aggression in 1914. Now all the Nietzschean hopes of renewal through destruction had vanished, and the enraged Dix devoted most of his energy in 1920 to an obsessive, savage and immensely disturbing sequence of war cripple paintings.[vi] War Cripples was the first in the provocative series by the same title. Exhibited in the First International Dada Fair in Berlin in 1920, the painting only escaped protest due to the other more controversial works being displayed alongside it.[vii] The image contains four male figures arranged in a frieze-like fashion along the canvas, each proudly donning their military uniforms and war wounds as they parade along the street. All are cripples, missing limbs from their time of service in the Great War. Bearing the scars of battle, their features are crude and distorted. Paint is applied upon the canvas with a precise line that emphasizes the angularity of the figures and their mechanical movements. Furthermore, it creates a space filled with figures and shapes that are inherently flat, recalling the film sets of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Figure 1). As for the painting’s color palette, little is known for it disappeared shortly after its appearance in the Degenerate Art Exhibition in 1937. In War Cripples, Dix created a powerful statement against the deluded self-image of the German people and its “pitifully maimed”[viii] soldiers. Dix painted the veterans of War Cripples as ruined[ix] grotesques, more machine than human; either by hobbling on their peg legs or pushed along in wheelchairs, the men proudly march the German streets unaware that they are not the glorious heroes they perceive. Yet, the soldiers happily march on, blinded by their pride. Furthermore, the figural composition recalls the friezes of ancient Greece, filled with the idealized forms of Classical gods and men (Figure 2). By creating this thematic contrast in War Cripples, Dix forces the German viewer to reconcile the difference between the heroes of old and the heroes of new. In doing so, he creates a scathing indictment of post-war society; no one was safe from Dix’s commentary in the painting. He attacked the military for butchering his generation, the public… for its fascination with these pathetic, reconstituted veterans and the cripples themselves for their undiminished national pride.[x] Just as Kirchner painted himself as a symbol of the sickness that overcame Germany following the war in his Self-Portrait as an Invalid (Figure 3), Dix uses the wounded soldiers in War Cripples as a metaphor for the dangers of the country’s national pride. Interwar German rhetoric held fast to the notion that Germany, despite its grievous losses and injuries, was still the glorious country it had been prior to WWI. Yet, the country struggled with its identity in the wake of its defeat. Dix was so critical of the German military, citizens and soldiers because all appeared to relish in the chance to redefine themselves as heroes and restore their pride. Another war provided for another opportunity to reconcile their conflicting identities. By portraying the soldiers of War Cripples as ruined, Dix is declaring that there is no glory in war, only death, destruction and decay; war would not afford them the outcome they so desired. Like the cripples within the painting, Germany and many of its citizens blindly marched on, forgetting the source of their disintegration. As Dix continued his War Cripples series, his work moved farther away from Expressionism and further into the harsh realism that characterized the Neue Sachlichkeit movement. Eventually Dix moved almost exclusively into war imagery as Germany moved closer to the tenth anniversary of the onset of The Great War. The country was at its most volatile point in 1924 following the riots between the communists and right-wing respondents at the inauguration of the national cenotaph commemorating those lost in the war.[xi] Controversy over Dix’s graphic war-scene, The Trench (Figure 4), also reached its nation-wide climax.[xii] Dix had painted an image of the real war within the trenches; the war that Germany lost, the war in which so many lives had been destroyed, not the war people sitting by their cozy stoves had dreamt of or idealized.[xiii] Both events “demonstrated that even a semblance of cohesion was unattainable”[xiv] as Germany was unable to grapple with its defeat or responsibility for The Great War. Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
i “German Expressionism: Otto Dix,” Museum of Modern Art, New York, online. ii Ibid. iii Ibid. iv “The Art of War,” National Gallery of Austria, online. v Padmore, “Expressionist Opera,” 46. vi Cork, A Bitter Truth, 251-2. vii Crockett, “Otto Dix and The Trench Affair,” 76. viii Cork, A Bitter Truth, 252. ix Fox, “Confronting Postwar Shame in Weimar Germany,” 249. x Crockett, “Otto Dix and The Trench Affair,” 72. xi Fox, “Confronting Postwar Shame in Weimar Germany,” 254. xii Crockett, “Otto Dix and the Trench Affair,” 77. xiii Ibid. xiv Fox, “Confronting Postwar Shame in Weimar Germany,” 254.
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