Comparisons

• Grosz, Republican Automatons
• Lang,  Metropolis still

Both Grosz and Lang were German artists whose work reflected the deeply negative effects of World War I on Germany. Both toyed with a projection of the new mechanized warfare in their images of robots. Grosz in particular skewered the German leadership with satirical compositions such as Republican Automatons that placed blame upon industrialists and patriotism. Lang’s film brings to life the horrors of a world run by industrialists and scientists who oppress workers and fear the “New Woman” movement.

Key Topics

The varying responses of artists to the beginnings of the “modern age” after 1880. 

• Divergent trends in Paris: some artists adopted scientific progressivism, while others fled the industrial landscape to seek succor in a utopian primitivism.

• A medieval utopia: Expressionist artists in twentieth-century Germany were inspired by the collective ethic of the guild system; the potential moral effects of architecture were explored.

• In celebration of technology: Italian Futurists developed an art to mirror the speed and physical brutality of the modern world.

• A colorful future: in America the Synchromists produced color-saturated abstractions that influenced industrial design.

• Machine war: World War I produced a crisis in the arts, as in every other field of endeavor in the West. In Germany, many artists responded with a dystopian, disordered vision of the world; others, more positively, proposed a fresh start for the arts in its aftermath.