RADICAL ART: PRINTMAKING AND THE LEFT IN 1930s NEW YORK

Reviews face. Jan van Eyck’s paintings, for example the Altarpiece of the Lamb (1432, Cathedral of St Bavo, Ghent), with its characterised individuals and depth of feeling, its translucent highlights of oil colours, could for the sake of analogy usefully be contrasted with Stephan Lochner’s Last Judgement (1435,Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne). Lochner’s work is much flatter and more dense than Van Eyck’s, and this painting in particular has none of the fluidity of surface of its counterparts further west. Snyder’s writing is neat and informative, but has a uniformity of tone so that the very few exclamations of interest seem odd and out of place. Comparison is not something that Snyder seems particularly comfortable with, unless it involves comparing paintings to the standards set by Van Eyck and, in particular, Rogier van der Weyden. These two are obvious favourites, and the largest central section of Northern Renaissance Art (entitled ‘Fifteenth-century innovations’) is dominated by them. After a brief discussion of Germany and Switzerland, Van Eyck is introduced and takes pride of place in the first half of the section with his undeniably impressive works, numbering among them the Van der Paele Madonna of 1436 in Bruges’ Groeninge Museum and several portraits, from whose dark velvet backgrounds stare remarkably self-contained individuals. Following Van Eyck, Rogier (he is referred to, as all artists credited with being somehow greater than their times are, by his first name alone) makes his entrance, and proceeds to dominate the art world with his tall and refined nobles, and his ability to make individuals appear both stylised and life-like at once. For most of the book, Snyder’s chapters read like a series of lectures placed together in chronological order: no attempt is made to relate sections to any others, all of them functioning as selfcontained worlds much like the images they describe. It is only in the chapters on the most famous artists (Van Eyck, Van der Weyden, Bosch, Dürer, Brueghel) that a sense of a larger artistic life is seen. To be fair to Snyder, the vast majority of the work he discusses is quite obscure and the artists more so. Many of them have no more individual identity than ‘Master of the. . .’ work in question. The little we do know of them is presented skilfully, but the thought cannot be suppressed that some of them would have been better left un- 38 The Art Book mentioned rather than exposing such tiny tantalising details. This would have given Snyder room to elaborate further upon the background to the growing Italian influence on northern Europe, touched on in his Dürer chapter but given a relatively small section at the end of the book. Yet Snyder’s text makes an extremely good reference book for the entirety of the period it covers. There cannot be many painters, sculptors, manuscript illuminators or tapestry weavers that it does not refer to, however briefly, and the index is comprehensive. Students of northern Renaissance art in search of an image will probably find it in the seven hundred or so selected by Snyder; there are also maps of the many centres of art production throughout Europe and a timeline showing artistic advances in relation to other fields of endeavour. A sense of how the artists of this time related to one another is, however, relegated to discussions of workshops, or on a few occasions their meetings. Despite such a long text, the burgeoning world of the print is left relatively unexplored in favour of biography, and woodcuts and engravings appear only fleetingly. This is not to say that Northern Renaissance Art is a bad book, or even that its merits in comparison with others on the same period make it unworthy of attention. It is a text of its time, and that was a time when the relationships between art and the rest of the world were not pursued with the same vigour as they are now. Snyder’s words are well written, but they are not an engaging read. matt cambridge Freelance Art Historian, Edinburgh RADICAL ART: PRINTMAKING AND THE LEFT IN 1930s NEW YORK helen langa University of California Press 2004 d36.95 $55.00 345 pp. 104 mono illus isbn 0520231554 n Radical Art: Printmaking and the Left in 1930s New York, Helen Langa offers the most extensive overview to date of American printmaking during the Great Depression and the New Deal. She makes an excellent case for the need for such a study; because printing was relatively inexpensive, it made art as affordable and I volume 12 issue 2 may 2005 r bpl/aah accessible to the public as was realistically possible during the worst economic crisis in American history, and many artists produced prints hoping to make collectors out of ordinary people. Many of these prints depicted the lives and problems of factory labourers, miners, construction workers, African Americans, the unemployed and the homeless with great compassion and journalistic acuity. Some artists used prints to condemn the spreading totalitarianism and political instability that precipitated the Second World War. However, in spite of the abundance of prints made, much more attention has been given to painting of the era. The author’s explanation of the problems, using the terms ‘Social Realism’ and ‘social viewpoint art’, is a cogent, helpful scrutiny of commonly used terminology in the study of American art of the 1930s and how this period has been traditionally understood, but it remains to be seen if her new term will gain favour with scholars. Langa’s extensive discussion of the different organisations that supported the dissemination of prints, of the connections between artists and left-wing political organisations, and the differences in ideas about appropriate subjects and styles for prints is highly informative. She reveals much about the problems that artists encountered in resolving the competing goals of appealing to the public, recording the harsh truths of contemporary life, and satisfying their desire for selfexpression and artistic creativity. Langa’s decision to focus on New York City, however, is curious, disappointing, and unsubstantiated. It reinforces the assumption that innovative art was made only in the large cities of the northeast, particularly the presumptive capital of American art, New York. This focus on New York excludes many significant artists who worked elsewhere. Without further explanation, the reader falls back on preconceived notions that New York was the heart and soul of leftist politics and art in 1930s’ America and that art in the rest of the nation was inconsequential and provincial. Perceived divisions of religion, race and political thought in the America of the 1930s are similarly reinforced. The irony of Langa’s limited geographic scope is that she frequently discusses artists who are hardly typical, life-long New Yorkers, such as Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton and Diego Rivera, to clarify and reinforce aspects of her thesis. Langa discusses few Reviews artists and prints that would be considered part of Precisionism, Regionalism or the American Scene movement. There is no clear explanation for this, although her focus on New York is certainly a partial one, since Regionalism was a movement that strove to demonstrate that important contemporary art could be found in the rural heartland and not just in large cities. Even if these excluded artists were not as committed to political ideologies as ‘social viewpoint’ artists, their depictions of American life were concurrent and laden with commentary on modern American life; their absence becomes conspicuous and makes the book seem enigmatically incomplete. In her lengthy analyses of the political organisations, artists’ groups and government-sponsored art projects of the 1930s, Langa mentions that many of them were national in their activities and membership, thereby leaving no doubt that these artistic developments extended beyond New York. When she asserts that New York ‘social viewpoint’ artists depicted assembly lines and miners only occasionally, she explains that this is because they depicted what was nearby and could observe personally, and that some travelled to coal mines to witness the terrible conditions of the mines for themselves. Therefore, the reader is left to ponder some very obvious and basic questions, which Langa ignores. Did printmakers from the industrial Midwest and coal mining areas in Appalachia explore such subjects? If they did, how were their perspectives on these local, familiar subjects different from those of artists from afar? If they did not depict these subjects, why not? Or has the author concluded that there were no artists of significance in the Rust Belt and Appalachia in the 1930s, and buried this opinion in the book’s focus on New York? Similarly, the focus on New York is questioned by the many prints of the time that depict lynchings, which grew in number during the 1930s but occurred mostly in the South, and which were depicted by many artists who were not native, lifelong New Yorkers. Langa claims that ‘social viewpoint’ artists treaded cautiously as they explored the most disturbing examples of poverty, dangerous working conditions and racial prejudices of the era, and thus they produced very few prints that depicted these circumstances explicitly and forcefully. She explains that they did not want to become overtly Marxist in their ideology and excessively modern in their styles because they did not want to offend their desired audience, while attempting to make them more alert politically and culturally. Early in the book she cites two prints as unusually daring and bold depictions of these sensitive issues; at this point in her study, it seems that there might not be enough potent examples to sustain her argument. Fortunately, it becomes apparent as the text unfolds that the situation is not nearly so hopeless. Langa devotes most of the text to close readings of prints that support her broader claims. These analyses are usually perceptive, articulate and well informed; this is when her book is at its best. They are well supported by extensive introductions at the start of each chapter which thoroughly and carefully contextualise the prints. The author’s exhaustive research is evident in the enormous body of endnotes that refer the reader to important scholarship and expand on some fascinating ideas discussed in the text. The book is organised thematically, rather than by artist or type of print media, and this better serves its goals. Radical Art is also a wonderful resource of illustrations for these overlooked, lesser-known works. It leaves no doubt that printmaking in 1930s America was far more vital and intriguing than most people realise. herbert r hartel, jr John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY FRIEDL DICKER-BRANDEIS: VIENNA 1898FAUSCHWITZ 1944 elena makarova Tallfellow/Every Picture Press in association with the Simon Wiesenthal Center 2001 d17.99 $35.00 240 pp. Fully illustrated isbn 0-9676061-9-5 UK apply direct to Tallfellow Press www.tallfellow.com he dates of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis’ life offer clues to her background and eventual fate. Makarova’s book gives an overview of the cultural and political context of a fascinating artistic and personal life, describing and illustrating Dicker-Brandeis’ childhood in Vienna – which the book describes as ‘Europe’s cultural center’ – and her development as an artist and designer within the Bauhaus movement. After working in theatre design T in Berlin she developed an interest in bookbinding, textiles and furniture. Following the right wing putsch in Vienna in 1934 she left her architectural firm and fled to Prague, where she became a teacher. In the final years of her life she ran children’s art classes in the ghetto at Theresienstadt, from where she was deported to the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Dicker-Brandeis was part of a closeknit circle of designers who worked in Berlin and Vienna. The architectural firm that she and her lover Franz Singer founded in Vienna received a commission in 1930 to furnish the new experimental Montessori school, which came to be known as ‘the model kindergarten of proletarian Red Vienna’. The school was destroyed following the right-wing revolt in February 1934, along with many of the buildings and commissions designed by the Atelier Singer-Dicker. Dicker-Brandeis, as a member of the Communist Party, actively supported the anti-fascists and she was arrested, imprisoned and tortured after false passports were found during a search of her flat. She was finally released after Singer testified that she could not have forged passports because ‘she does not know how to draw a straight line’. She fled to Prague where she worked with the traumatised children of refugees. Her personal life, which had been complicated and unhappy since Singer married someone else, improved in Prague. She made contact with her mother’s sister and eventually married her cousin, Pavel Brandeis. She was still an active Communist and wanted to go to Spain to fight fascism but could not bear to leave Pavel. When Germany annexed Prague her friends wanted her to leave but she would not leave either the city or her husband. Round-ups began and in autumn 1942 she received her call for deportation. She and Pavel arrived in Theresienstadt on 17 December 1942. Makarova describes the art lessons Friedl Dicker-Brandeis organised in Theresienstadt. It is hard to imagine the constant exhaustion, hunger and terror that people lived with. To be able to function at all, let alone to find the will to express herself through art, is quite incredible. Much emphasis is put on Dicker-Brandeis’ ‘system’, adopted from her mentor Johannes Itten. The ‘theology’ of the battle between the sun of light and the sun of darkness, Makarova suggests, ‘became all too real’. Art produced in the ghetto reflects how volume 12 issue 2 may 2005 r bpl/aah The Art Book 39