Mid-Week Links Round-up

[moon_custafer]

I tried making some (non-animated) reaction images to try and link to when needed. So far they haven't worked in any of the threads in which I've wanted to use them.

While looking up the Otto Dix portrait, I also found his painting of Dr. Wilhelm Mayer-Hermann ; I’d known for years that “I’m just going to make everyone look ugly ‘cos I hate’em” wasn’t really Dix’s motivation (apparently he and Dr. Heinrich Stadelmann were pretty good friends, and a lot of his sitters were proud to have been painted in his snarky style ) but I love it that Dr. Mayer-Hermann, years later when both he and the painting had separately ended up in New York, apparently liked to visit his portrait in the Museum of Modern Art and eavesdrop on people’s reactions. 

Wow, Florence Bates had an interesting life.

Gearing up for Hallowe’en: “When He Died” by Lemon Demon is the cheeriest slice of horror you’ll hear this week:

When he died
Turns out he left behind a mansion full of other people's skulls
The odd thing is
they never found his own

Comments

[sabotabby]

The portrait of Dr. Heinrich Stadelmann completely shaped my aesthetic as a child and I hold it partially responsible for why I bonded with Berlin so hard.

[moon_custafer]

He looks a little like a very sad praying mantis.

[sovay]

Dr. Mayer-Hermann, years later when both he and the painting had separately ended up in New York, apparently liked to visit his portrait in the Museum of Modern Art and eavesdrop on people’s reactions.

That's adorable.

[moon_custafer]

He’s supposed to have quipped that if people could recognize him from the portrait, he wouldn’t have any patients.

[sovay]

He’s supposed to have quipped that if people could recognize him from the portrait, he wouldn’t have any patients.

Well, since I am having difficulty getting an image search to cough up a picture of him rather than his portrait, these days he may be recognizable by it alone . . .

[moon_custafer]

I did find one in the google books scan of Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s. It’s... the same man but not, if you see what I mean.

http://mooncustafer.tumblr.com/post/177527476485/while-looking-up-otto-dix-portrait-of-dr

[sovay]

It’s... the same man but not, if you see what I mean.

Yes; he's recognizable but less dramatically convex.

Also pretty cute, if you ask me.

[moon_custafer]

Perhaps the portrait is him as he looks reflected in that big mirror thingy in the background? Which reminds me of something else I noticed yesterday— unlike most well-known paintings with mirrors in them, you can’t see a reflection of the artist at work in this one.

[sovay]

Perhaps the portrait is him as he looks reflected in that big mirror thingy in the background?

He's definitely painted to match all the circles on his wall.

Which reminds me of something else I noticed yesterday— unlike most well-known paintings with mirrors in them, you can’t see a reflection of the artist at work in this one.

Yes! It's not a realistic painting in that sense, either.

[moon_custafer]

It’s funny, because the style was literally called “New Objectivity.” Perhaps the absence of the artist’s reflection was meant to indicate that, though if so it’s a lie and fuels my suspicion of anyone claiming to be objective.

There’s really no way I can sneak a scene in 1983 where Maxie and E.M. go to MOMA, is there? because that conversation would be wonderful:
“Mayer-Hermann? Why does that name ring a bell?”
“You went to see him that time you strained your voice. Along with every other singer and actor in town.”
“Oh yes— there were so many divas in his waiting room you and I were betting on whether a fight or a concert would break out first.”
“Who won?”
“I don’t remember.”
(Pause.)
“Good ear, nose and throat man.”
“Lousy portrait.”

[sovay]

It’s funny, because the style was literally called “New Objectivity.”

I know! And it was full of caricatures and photomontage and Max Beckmann, whom I adore and who was not a realist either. I have read that "matter-of-factness" is a better translation for Sachlichkeit than "objectivity." I could probably just check that. [edit] Aha!

I can't believe there hasn't been an artistic movement actually called the "New Resignation."

“Good ear, nose and throat man.”
“Lousy portrait.”

DO IT.

[moon_custafer]

“In one of his few statements, published in 1927, Dix declared, The object is primary and the form is shaped by the object.”
WTF Otto? Maybe that makes more sense in German.

I have read that "matter-of-factness" is a better translation for Sachlichkeit than "objectivity."

"The matter-of-factness/resignation/sobriety/dispassion is primary and the form is shaped by matter-of-factness/resignation/sobriety/dispassion.”
Still doesn’t help.

Meanwhile...If I google “William Mayer-Hermann” (he changed his first name when he emigrated), I don’t get any more pictures, but he turns up in the 1940 New York census:
https://www.ancestry.com/1940-census/usa/New-York/William-Mayerhermann_d2g6v
The page seems to think Ilse was Wilhelm’s wife, but it seems likelier from the last name and their ages that she was married to Kurt. (Ooh, maybe they were a menage-a-trois)?
Hang on, this seems to be the same Ilse – she seems to have been married to someone named Hersch Feldschuh /Henry Herman Field (1897-1945), except he was in Chicago at the time of the 1940 census; he died in 1945 and she later married someone named Herbert Wolff. She died in 1993 in Chicago, so I’m guessing she’d moved out there at some point to join Hersch and stayed. http://www.frf.com/family/individual.php?pid=I903&ged=tree1 I can’t find any reference to a Kurt – Ilse had a half-brother, but according to this he was only 16 at the time of the 1940 census and *he* was in Chicago at the time (with his brother-in-law?) http://www.frf.com/family/individual.php?pid=I906&ged=tree1

So who the hell was Kurt?