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16/2/2008

Glamour!

Georg Kolbe Museum, Berlin

The exhibition Glamour! From It-Girl to Glittering Lady – Depictions of Women in the late Weimar Republic is devoted to the image of women in the time between 1928 and 1933.
Right up to the present day, the glittering and elegant style and the film and fashion photography of the late 1920s and early 1930s represent the essence of “glamour”. Whether one thinks of the models in the photographs of the successful Berlin fashion photograph Yva or the star portraits of Hollywood and Ufa actresses from the time: these cool and perfect beauties have not lost their aesthetic appeal for us today.
Worldly film stars, models with inaccessible erotic appeal, elegant, big-city women – in the 1920s the “lady” replaced the “girl” or the “garconne”. Many women focussed on what they saw in fashion magazines and movie screens. The new, more feminine style which women saw led them to change their own appearance: a new style came into being.
In five thematic clusters about fashion, movies and actresses, women in society, athletics and the “Georg-Schicht Prize for the Loveliest German Portrait of a Woman”, this exhibition seeks to answer the question of what brought about the change in the depiction of women and how this change showed itself.
Alongside nearly forgotten artists such as Lotte Laserstein or Lieselotte Friedlaender, works by Christian Schad, Tamara de Lempicka, Willy Jaeckel, Leo von König, Ernesto de Fiori, Rudolf Schlichter, Yva and Jeanne Mammen are presented.
Even when it is the case that today we, knowing as we do the dictatorship which followed it, sense a more conservative character in the final years of the first German democracy than the restless, experimental and libertine days of the Roaring Twenties might indicate, still the art, literature, photography and film of this period brought forth things of significance and interest.

Fashion
The word "Glamour" was "already in use in the 1920s. This concept brought to mind memories of one of the most spectacular fashion epochs of the twentieth century: flowing material and figure-emphasizing tailoring highlighted a women’s feminine side. Elegance, style and quality were the slogans of the fashion.
The photography of the time – as an independent concept with the name "Glamour photography" – used refined light and shadow play to enhance its subjects and let faces appear to be from another planet. In the fashion magazines and advertisements, fashion photography gradually achieved a position similar to that enjoyed by commercial art and thus enjoyed its first boom. The photograph Yva influenced the aesthetics of her time with her pictures, making fashion glamorous. She was active in Berlin the late 1920s and early 1930s and is still regarded as one of the most famous fashion photographers of that period.
Lieslotte Friedlaender, in her job as chief draughtsman, was responsible for the artistic layout of the women’s magazine Moden-Spiegel. In her illustrations one can also see the gradual change in fashion and the depiction of women.
A further artist active in the area of fashion was Jeanne Mammen. In order to pay her rent she made illustrations for fashion magazines with urbane water colours. Not until 1930 did she achieve a breakthrough as an independent artist with her individual exhibition in Galerie Gurlitt in Berlin; nonetheless she is today mostly associated with the 1920s.
"Glamour" also stands for internationality and a cosmopolitan character. The artist Tamara de Lempicka, who lived in Paris, painted works in the art-deco style which showed women of porcelain perfection. These works appeared as the title pages for the magazine Die Dame, also distributed in Germany, and thus contributed to the new understanding of sophisticated elegance and also influenced the depiction of women.
Christian Schad, with his famous, cool portraits one of the most important artistic protagonists of the twenties, also allowed some of his pictures to be reproduced as the title pages of the magazines Sport im Bild and Die Dame.
Along with photography, paintings, drawings and water colours from the artists mentioned, as well as others, fashion magazines (Die Dame, Sport im Bild, Elegante Welt), and individual pieces of clothing and accessories are exhibited to show the style of the time and the changed depiction of women. A shop window mannequin from the early 1930s presents this female image as well.

Female Movie Stars
Above all else, the presentation and appearance of the Hollywood and Ufa stars of the new top films set the mark for the new image of the feminine in the time around 1930. The improvement of film techniques changed also the possibilities for visual effects of the actors. On screen they appeared more natural and at the same time more expressive due to sharper contours and depth perceptions. This effect was achieved without the exaggerated gestures or heavy make up that was typical of the previous age. The forming of the face by means of light and the corresponding aesthetic were raised to an ever higher level of perfection, for example, by Joseph von Sternberg and his discovery, Marlene Dietrich.
Marlene Dietrich rose to the status of world star in these years and influenced the style of her day as much as the previously most famous female star, the Swede Greta Garbo. Garbo’s reduced facial gestures, her self-control, behind which one supposed an emotional and intellectual profundity, but also the way that she dressed and used make up were copied by thousands.
Movies, with their record number of viewers, were an absolute mass media but also magazines and collecting cards spread the images of the film stars.
In Germany, actresses such as Lil Dagover, Lilian Harvey, Elisabeth Bergner or Brigitte Helm took their places alongside Marlene Dietrich as models for fashion, make up and habitus.
Artists also devoted themselves to the image of these women. The sculptor Ernesto de Fiori made portraits of his wife, the actress Barbara Dju, the star of the Berlin theatre scene Elisabeth Bergner, the actress Anny Ahlers and, in his most famous work, Marlene Dietrich.
Works by de Fiori, but also paintings such as Leo von König’s portrait of Lil Dagover, which shows her completely in the pose of a glamorous film diva, as well as Christian Schad’s picture of the Ufa actress and fencing champion Mulino von Kluck (Alexandra Molino) are presented in this exhibition. Photographs document the importance that film and theatre stars had in their time and the way that their manner of self portrayal made a mark on the image of the woman as lady.

The Woman in Society
This exhibition concerns itself with the diverse roles of women in society only in a few aspects, in particular the complex political issues can only be barely touched. In addition to several portriats – by artist like Tamara de Lempicka, Christian Schad and Rudolf Schlichter – two themes in particular are chosen to document the slowly changing image of women.

The Georg-Schicht-Prize
The Georg-Schicht Prize, which the cosmetic firm Elida AG awarded in 1928 for the "Loveliest German Portrait of a Woman", marked the beginning of a change in the image of the woman and symbolized, among other things, the desire for a new national identity. Most of the pictures submitted for this competition are now lost, but nonetheless two participants, Nikolaus Sagrekow and Lotte Laserstein, can be shown with their submission.

Sports
Athletics were both in the Weimar Republic as well as later during the time of National Socialism an important aspect of social life. In the years following 1933 mass sporting events were of greater importance. In these events the individual – according to the Nazi ideology – counted far less than the group as a whole. Before this time, however, successful individual athletes enjoyed centre stage and were counted among the favourite personalities of the day.
In the early 1920s there were several female athletes who participated in athletic disciplines that were traditionally seen as "manly," such as boxing, flying or riding. Increasingly, at the end of the Weimar Republic, women gained popularity who were successful in the more elegant individual disciplines such as tennis, fencing, sailing or archery.
Ideals such as grace and concentration replaced characteristics such as courage and strength and in the area of athletics things got more "ladylike." Leo von König’s portrait of the Wimbledon champion Cilly Aussem, "The Tennis Player," by Lotte Laserstein, as well as several works by Constantin Starck are examples of this genre.

The exhibit is divided into five thematic blocks: "Fashion", "Female Movie Stars", "The Woman in Society", "Sports" and "The Georg-Schicht-Prize".
Paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographies from artists like Ernesto de Fiori, Lieselotte Friedlaender, Leo von König, Lotte Laserstein, Tamara de Lempicka, Jeanne Mammen or Nikolaus Sagrekow, Christian Schad, Constantin Starck and Yva document the new style in the period from 1928 to 1933.

Image: Tamara de Lempicka, Das Telefon II, 1930, Kollektion W. Joop; Aufnahme: Markus Hilbich, Berlin

Catalogue (in German, E. A. Seemann Verlag, Leipzig) with articles from Ursel Berger, Verena Dollenmaier, Birgit Haase, Wolfgang Joop, Susanne Meyer-Büser and Werner Sudendorf.

Partners of the exhibtion are:
Kunstbibliothek – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,
Deutsche Kinemathek with the Marlene Dietrich Collection
Modemuseum Schloss Meyenburg
Freundeskreis Georg-Kolbe-Museum e.V.

Georg-Kolbe-Museum
Sensburger Allee 25, 14055 Berlin
Opening Times: Tuesday to Sunday, 10-17h

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