| Artist: | Grosz, George |
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|---|---|---|
| Title of Work: | Riot of the Insane | |
| Date of Work: | 1915 | |
| Nationality: | German | |
| Context: | WWI | |
| Movement: | Berlin Dada | |
| Medium: | Pen & Ink on Paper | |
| Subject: a mad dance of death in the city streets following the outbreak of WWI in1914. Grosz shows his disgust with the war mentality in this scene of a world without order. The city street erupts into wanton, random outbreaks of violence, becoming a mob scene as the bourgeoisie devolve into something beastlike and animalistic. Men rob and pillage, rape and murder. People trample each other in their rush to exit the church. Buildings are lit on fire; boats sink in the water. It's like L.A. after the "big one"--chaos and pandemonium reign supreme. One man dangles a woman out of the window, holding her by her hair; she is so scared that she pisses. Grosz does not paint a pretty picture of humanity here, but then Grosz knew better than to believe that war brings out the best in humanity. There is no innocence in this scene he calls "Riot of the Insane." The image is drawn out of hatred and disgust. Style: not academic figure drawing; Grosz uses a deliberately crude, childlike line drawing, which registers his hatred through its scratchy, biting dark humor. His line drawings truly have "edge." Space is rendered in a slashing, kaleiodscope way, not unlike a Dada photomontage of clashing images on a collision course to indicate a world order turned upside-down; chaos. He uses overlappings and caricature to point out the absurdity of it all. George Grosz is at his best when he hates. Context: Dada anti-art, working deliberately against the aesthetic and the academic in the spirit of Tristan Tzara's Dada Manifesto to create an art of the streets rather than the museums. Anti-decorative and anti-sentimental about humanity; also anti-expressionistic in that it is not about the artist searching his own tortured soul or expressing his internal spiritual angst or precious psyche. Grosz turns his spotlight outward on society more than inward on himself. Dada fought its own war, away from the muddy trenches and back in the cities where it was possible to put blinders on; Dada mounted its attack on the bourgeois morality and complacency that condoned the war from the stages of the cabaret and the streets rather than from the safety of the artist's studio and the art galleries. Dada is an "art" of protest that tried to point out the absurdity of the war, which they saw as hypocritical and morally bankrupt. In Berlin where Grosz worked, Dada became particularly political in its "edge." Grosz is always best when he hates. A cynical man, his autobiography is titled, "A Little Yes and a Big No." Dada came naturally to Grosz. Quotations from the Dada Manifesto: "Carry on, my children, humanity . . . Science says we are the servants of nature: everything is in order, make love and bash your brains in. . . . Order = disorder; ego = non-ego; affirmation = negation. There is no ultimate Truth. . . . We are in search of NOTHING we affirm the VITALITY of every INSTANT." | ||
