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Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s (Metropolitan Museum of Art Publications)

Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s (Metropolitan Museum of Art Publications)
By Sabine Rewald, Ian Buruma, Matthias Eberle

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Product Description

In the 1920s Germany was in the grip of social and political turmoil: its citizens were disillusioned by defeat in World War I, the failure of revolution, the disintegration of their social system, and inflation of rampant proportions. Curiously, as this important book shows, these years of upheaval were also a time of creative ferment and innovative accomplishment in literature, theater, film, and art.
Glitter and Doom is the first publication to focus exclusively on portraits dating from the short-lived Weimar Republic. It features forty paintings and sixty drawings by key artists, including Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, and George Grosz. Their works epitomize Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), in particular the branch of that new form of realism called Verism, which took as its subject contemporary phenomena such as war, social problems, and moral decay. Subjects of their incisive portraits are the artists’ own contemporaries: actors, poets, prostitutes, and profiteers, as well as doctors, lawyers, businessmen, and other respectable citizens. The accompanying texts reveal how these portraits hold up a mirror to the glittering, vital, doomed society that was obliterated when Hitler came to power.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #299070 in Books
  • Published on: 2006-12-01
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 304 pages

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Sabine Rewald is Jacques and Natasha Gelman Curator in the Department of 19th-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ian Buruma teaches at Bard College, Annandale, New York, and is a regular contributor to the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. Matthias Eberle is Professor of Cultural History, Kunsthochscule, Berlin.   

Customer Reviews

A Lively Look at the Decadence of the Weimar Republic Years5
Author Sabine Rewald has written a fascinating survey that integrates the German psyche of the period between the gloom of World War I with its decimation of hope for a revolution and the rise of Hitler who ended any fantasies about the dreams of glitter that infused the artists and wealthy people of Germany.

In this beautifully designed and lushly illustrated book are the works of the major artists of the time, the ones we immediately recognize such as Otto Dix, Georg Grosz and Max Beckmann, as well as names less familiar to the general reading audience. These artists captured the decadence and 'cabaret' atmosphere that permeated the denying culture, using as models not only fellow artists and actors but also the spectrum from prostitutes and crime bosses to doctors and lawyers, none being shown in a very flattering light.

The many illustrations in the book are true to the original color and seem to capture the delusional elegance and grime that mixed the time so well. The portraits are veneer-like in that they depicted the doomed generation of people on the brink of destruction. If ever there existed a book that reveals the 'decay' and decadence against which Hitler railed this is it. The author wisely elected to employ essayists Ian Buruma and Matthias Eberle whose contributions to the flavor of the times and the influence of the disintegration of morals and taste make the texts readable and very informative.

Yale University Press has once again produced an art volume that focuses on a certain period of time that influenced the development of art in the history of a change - in visual art, in literature (from German writers as well as those who flocked to Berlin such as Christopher Isherwood), in music, and in film. It is a book of great importance and one that encourages repeated readings. Grady Harp, November 06

Glitter and Doom5
Twice viewed the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum here in New York. German art in the 20s is raw, obscene and decadent. A raucus reflection on hard times there. They had just suffered WW1, in the midst of fascism, insane inflation, etc.
Highlight: Otto Dix is a wild artist, forever a favorite now. Also a DaDa artist.
I am a frequent art museum visitor. Therefore, in my opinion, this catalogue did the show great justice which is not aways the case.

More DOOM than glitter 5
This is an amazing art book about the German underworld in the 1920s before the reign of Hitler during the fall of the Weimar Republic after World War I. This book contains mainly dark and disturbing art pieces that are featured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through February 2007. Very interesting to read about and it basically sums up the entire collection and more that are featured at the MET. Great book... not for the squimish. This book is really very dark and it does tell the true story of Germany during the 20s.