Beth Irwin Lewis. Art for All? The Collision of Modern Art and the Public in Late-Nineteenth-Century Germany. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003. x + 447 pp. $60.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-691-10265-8.
Reviewed by Clare Rogan (Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design)
Published on H-German (February, 2004)
With Art for All? The Collision of Modern Art and the Public in Late-Nineteenth-Century Germany, Beth Irwin Lewis examines the intersections between nationalism and art criticism in the newly formed state. This study takes on one of the enduring questions concerning modern art in Germany: why were German museums, patrons, and art dealers so much more receptive to avant-garde styles from 1900 onwards than their counterparts in Britain and the United States? Art for All?, goes back to the earlier debates over modern art, as they played out in the 1880s and 1890s in the popular new art journals, national exhibitions, artists' associations, private galleries, and museums. Considering the role of new technologies, the capitalist market system, the increasing number of women artists, and rising anti-semitism, Lewis examines the initial calls in this period for a new, modern, nationalist German art, and the mutual disillusion that came between artists and the general public.
Part 1 begins with debates over modern art as defined by the new art journals, Die Kunst fuer Alle and Der Kunstwart. Lewis examines the discussions about public monuments, the amazing commercial success of panoramas, and the reception of the art of Anton von Werner, Max Liebermann, Fritz von Uhde, Arnold Boecklin, and Max Klinger. Chapter 2 analyzes the complementary roles of the great exhibitions in Berlin and Munich and the numerous art societies sponsoring traveling exhibitions of contemporary art throughout Central Europe.
Part 2 discusses The Public and the Critic. In the 1890s, public misunderstanding and dislike of Post-Impressionist and Symbolist art prompted art critics to describe the boisterous general public as ignorant Schaupoebel or exhibition rabble (p. 144). The influence of Friedrich Nietzsche and of Julius Langbehn's enormously popular Rembrandt as Educator (1890) helped redefine the attitudes of critics and artists. As Lewis argues, "the concept of the public within the art world was transformed from a progressive entity helping to build the culture of the new nation into a fractured force threatening the creativity and integrity of the national culture" (p. 183).
Part 3 tells the concluding tale, The Fragmenting of Art and Its Public, 1892-1899. Chapter 4 looks at the perception of economic insecurity in the capitalist art market system as increasing numbers of artists entered the market, including newly professionalized women artists. Chapter 5 recounts the flight of modern artists from the tumult of the great public exhibitions to the elite spaces of private art dealers and artists's associations, such as the Munich Secession. The final chapter examines the international modernism in the luxury journal Pan in contrast to the liberal, national German modernism advocated by the journal Jugend.
Art for All? is a very impressive book, with encyclopedic range and nuanced cultural readings following the models established by George L. Mosse and Peter Paret. Throughout the study, Lewis sticks closely to the texts of the period. Yet, while engaging so closely with the nineteenth-century sources, Lewis is reluctant to engage late twentieth-century debates concerning methodology, and thereby misses opportunities. One key example is the discussion of the shifting definitions of "modern" and "modernism" as understood in Germany in the 1880s and 1890s (pp. 12-13). In a footnote Lewis acknowledges her decision not to discuss more recent theories of modernism (p. 317 n. 8). Yet selected inclusion of more recent studies, particularly on the distinctions between "modernism," "modernity" and "modernite" would have enriched the definitions from the 1880s and 1890s (pp. 12-13).[1] Lewis cites the work of Robert Jensen in Marketing Modernism in Fin-de-Siecle Europe and rightly notes their differences in both interpretation and approach (p. 317 n. 8). Yet the differences between Lewis and Jensen are most evident on a methodological level. Jensen wrote a study of artistic and market discourses constructing modernism and quoted, for example, Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus, while arguing against Peter Buerger's analysis of the avant-garde.[2] In contrast, Lewis avoids late-twentieth-century debates about theory in favor of the debates discussed in the 1880s and 1890s.
This book is designed to be accessible to the widest possible audience. All German is translated into English, and the numerous illustrations are accompanied by lengthy explanatory captions. The clear prose and lack of overt theorization make it accessible for all levels of undergraduates. At the same time, Art for All? retains a full scholarly apparatus. The discursive endnotes total an astounding ninety-six pages, providing essential commentary for the scholarly reader. That said, this reviewer wished more of the material in the notes had been incorporated into the main text.
The impressive contextual analyses of the major art journals make Art for All? essential for any study of German art in the 1880s and 1890s. Furthermore, the nuanced cultural readings add important depth to the history of German nationalism, anti-semitism and culture as a whole.
Notes
[1]. Compare with the useful summary of the distinctions between "modernism" (a general term for the various aesthetic movements from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century), "modernite" (the unsettling experience of urban life as part of continually changing consumer culture), and "modernity" (all-encompassing term for the historical period) in Rita Felski, The Gender of Modernity, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 12-13.
[2]. Robert Jensen, Marketing Modernism in Fin-de-Siecle Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 9-10.
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Citation:
Clare Rogan. Review of Lewis, Beth Irwin, Art for All? The Collision of Modern Art and the Public in Late-Nineteenth-Century Germany.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
February, 2004.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=8846
Copyright © 2004 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.org.