pg. 1

Contents.

List of Illustrations p.4Introduction p.6

Chapter 1: Semantics of the Form: A Brief History of Photographic Manipulation.

p.10Chapter 2: Grosz, Heartfield and the

Problematic Party. p.24Chapter 3: Georg Lukács, Bertolt

Brecht and the Marxist quandary. p.34Chapter 4: Walter Benjamin, Fascism and

Enlightening the Proletariat. p.44Conclusion p.51

Bibliography p.56

pg. 2

List of Illustrations

Unknown Artist, American School, Occupational Portrait of a Salesman, three quarter length, seated, displaying his wares, around 1850 and

1860, daguerreotype, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington.

Unidentified Artist, American School, Unidentified Woman, three quarter length portrait, full face, seated, with arm on table with tablecloth, between 1850 and 1860, daguerreotype, Library of

Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington.

Henry Peach Robinson, British, When the Day's Work is Done, 1877, albumen silver, 560mm x 745mm, The J.Paul Getty Museum.

Artist, American School, circular early 'snapshooter' images, 1890-92, 286 cyanotypes and gelatin silver prints, 283mm x 368mm x 280mm,

Metropolitan Museum of Art.

P.H Emerson, British, In the Barley Harvest, 1890, photogravure mounted on paper, 243mm x 237xx, gifted to the Royal Academy by

Emerson.

Lewis Hine, American, Furman Owens, 12-years-old. Can't read. Doesn't know his A,B,C's. Said, "Yes I want to learn but can't when I work all the time." Been in the mills 4 years, 3 years in the Olympia

Mill. Columbia, South Carolina, 1908-1912, variable dimensions, courtesy of TheHistoryPlace online image bank.

Hugo Van Werden, German, Friedrich Krupp Cast Steel Works, Essen 1872-73, albumen prints from wet collodion negatives, 430mm x

2473mm, gift of H. & R. Rieger to the Museum of Modern Art.

Lewis Hine, American, Seafood Workers: Cutting fish in a sardine cannery. Large sharp knives are used with a cutting and sometimes

chopping motion. The slippery floors and benches and careless bumping into each other increase the liability of accidents. "The salt

water gits into the cuts and they ache," said one boy. Eastport, Maine, 1908-1912, unknown dimensions, courtesy of TheHistoryPlace online

image bank.

August Sander, German, Indian Man and German Woman, 1926, gelatin silver print, 284mm x 215mm, Gift of the photographer to the Museum

of Modern Art.

John Heartfield, German, N'ayez pas peur - il est végétarien/ Do not be afraid, he is vegetarian, 1936, photomontage, dimensions variable.

pg. 3

John Heartfield, German, Hurrah, die Butter, ist alle!/ Hurrah, the butter is all gone!, 193, photomontage, published on the front page of the AIZ

in 1935.

Press Photo in Steglitzer Anzeiger, George Grosz (right), Wieland Herzfelde (left) in Court, 4/12/1930, image courtesy of Gebr. Mann

Verlag, Berlin. Unknown Artist, Stalin'n'spirit inspire and defend our Army and

Motherland!, photomontage, coutesy of communisme-bolchevisme online archive.

George Grosz, Be Submissive to the Authorities, lithograph, 1926, image courtesy of the Southbank Centre.

John Heartfield, The Meaning of the Hitler Salute: A little man asks for large gifts, Cover of AIZ, Vol 11, no. 42, October 16th 1932.

George Grosz, Made in Germany, lithograph, 1920, 290mm x 249mm, image courtesy of MoMA online archives.

John Heartfield, After 10 Years, Fathers and Sons, AIZ cover, photomontage, 1934.

Gustave Caillebotte,The Floor Scrapers, 1875, Oil on canvas, 102cm x 146.5 cm, Musée d'Orsay.

Aleksandr Laktionov, Letter From The Front, 1947, Oil on Canvas, 225cm x 155cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Image Courtesy of Bridgeman

images.

John Heartfield, Whoever Reads Bourgeois Newspapers Becomes Blind and Deaf...,From AIZ 9 no. 6, 1930, Photomontage, Getty Images.

Unknown Photographer, image published in Wilhelm Köhler’s The National Revolution in Germany, 1933, caption states: ‘Adolf Hitler. He

wears an S.A. uniform without any signs of rank to display his close relationship with the simple S.A. man’, photo form the Calvin German

Propaganda archive.

Hugo Jaeger, Colour Photograph Professor Morrel, Wife Of Gauletier Forster And Hitler At Hitler’s Obersalzburg House, 1939,

Image courtesy of LIFE archives.

Lewis Hine, photograph, "Our Baby Doffer" they called him. This is one of the machines he has been working at for some months at the

Avondale Mills. Said, after hesitation, "I'm 12," and another small boy added, "He can't work unless he's twelve." Child labour regulations

pg. 4

conspicuously posted in the mill. Location: Birmingham, Alabama, November 1910

Hans Haacke, Shapolsky et al. Real Estate Holdings, 1971, Gelatin silver print and printed and typed ink on paper, image

courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art Barcelona.

Introduction

Why Reality?'In an era where shock experiences have become the norm of city life, Benjamin

refers to montage as the strategy that fit the mission of the medium best, in this vein, he prefers constructed reality over the plain realism that photography is usually

expected to provide, and he argues that details of structures are more suited to the camera than 'soulful portraits'.1 Henry Bond, 2013

Social Reality in this essay is a term used to describe Marxist notions of truth, presented via visual means. Reality, fidelity to truth, empowerment and propaganda are the mainstays of these discussions and this collection of writing will try to mediate political bias and bourgeois subjectivity to present a well argued and considered response to the question: How best do we depict a true Social Reality to the proletariat of Weimar Germany?

As any historian knows most sources are heavily biased, and as Plato and many after him have argued perception of truth is an entirely subjective experience.

Looking briefly to Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’, about a cave where prisoners are kept from birth in a state of disempowerment. All day and night shadows on the wall of their prison are cast from the light of the sun and a fire and all they know are these projections of ‘reality’: life outside the cave is simplified to shadows on the wall. They take the shadows for truth, and understand the world through this mode. Here Plato mocks the ignorance of unquestioning society, the people of

1 Bond, H., Walter Benjamin, Fifty Key Writers on Photography, Routledge, London & New York, 2013, p.41.

pg. 5

the cave represent people who believe they can know the world merely through what they see and hear.

In the part two of the play Plato examines the small societies’ quest for knowledge (or lack thereof): ‘Socrates: And if someone even forced him to look into the glare of the fire, would his eyes not hurt him, and would he not then turn away and flee [back] to that which he is capable of looking at?’2 What he was saying here is that, as with water, the masses tend to take the path of least resistance and seek comfort in their false but ‘known’ world.

One prisoner escapes and comes to know the truth of the world, they learn the way of the sun, and of the true forms through a campaign of curiosity and returns to the cave to liberate the others. This character is representative of philosophy: ‘Socrates: And now, I responded, consider this: If this person who had gotten out of the cave were to go back down again and sit in the same place as before, would he not find in that case, coming suddenly out of the sunlight, that his eyes were filled with darkness? Glaucon: Yes, very much so.‘3 The homecoming results in the escapee being seen as quite ludicrous, their eyes flushed with the light they cannot continue to take pleasure in merely knowing simple forms.

It is my proposition that photomontage, the amalgamation of many images to form a new meaning, or the combination of image and text, are the modes of art making best suited to illuminating the cave and liberating its people in the face of an abstract but powerful dark propagandistic force of first the German state at war and then the fascist National Socialist party. Photomontage, in its unique position as a medium which collects ‘empirical’ materials from the state presses and reorganises them to

2 Plato, The Allegory of the Cave, Republic, VII 514 a, 2 to 517 a, 7, translated by Sheehan, T., [online] http://web.stanford.edu/class/ihum40/cave.pdf [accessed 28/03/2015]3 Plato, The Allegory of the Cave, Republic, VII 514 a, 2 to 517 a, 7, translated by Sheehan, T., [online] http://web.stanford.edu/class/ihum40/cave.pdf [accessed 28/03/2015]

pg. 6

unveil an enlightened realism de-establishes propagandist notions and then uses them as a weapon is a transcendent and pithy reaction to the issues presented by technology and power.

'In essence Lukács conceived realism as a given form, one that was at odds with all varieties of Modernism... Only a 'true' realism, based on example of the great realists of the past, could penetrate the contradictions of modern capitalism... Brecht on the

other hand, though agreeing that realism was the key issue for modern art, and agreeing too that Marxism provided the basis of an adequate approach to the

problem, argued that it was not so much an achieved form as something that had to be won and re-won in new conditions.’ Paul Wood, 19934

This collection of essays intend to examine the notion of empirical reality through an exploration of the history of photography, and the mediums complicated possession of power to illicit largely un-querying belief from the viewer despite a contentious history regarding manipulation and montage. This defence of photomontage, as a vanguard of truth, will be explored in relation to the Communist Party’s artist groups and also in relation to acclaimed Marxist philosophers Bertolt Brecht, Georg Lukács and Walter Benjamin. The rich dialogue between these esteemed thinkers is (thankfully) well recorded and they provide an inquisitive discourse on the nature of truth, reality and class empowerment. They all ruminated extensively upon truth, seeking a demonstration of reality that is both suitable for and sufficiently inspirational or exposing of a dark truth to work as a mobilising force for the proletariat. As this exploration draws to a close it will question the distinct power that technology possessed in relation to both deconstructing art and democratising in a

conversation with Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

These questions will hopefully compliment and convince the reader of my proposition that in Weimar

Germany photomontage was the most powerful truth-seeking medium. In turn this conclusion will then

hopefully provide some answers on how to seek reality today…

4Wood, P., Realism, rationalism, surrealism. Art between the wars, New Haven: Yale University Press, in association with the Open University, 1993. p.324.

pg. 7

'The last century has seen the development of photography, and

photographic process [become] one of the most important means of

making visual records that has ever been known. Today available to all

the world and so common and so cheap that it is taken as a matter of

course and without thought, photography has become as integral

a part of our actual life as printing (with which socially and

economically it is so closely allied). It is hardly overstating the case to

say that it has brought about an even greater revolution in our visual

knowledge and practice than printing did in our verbal knowledge

and practice.' William M. Ivins, Jr. - 19295

'For the Berlin Dadaists there was a need to move away from the

limitations of abstraction, the

5 Ivins, Jr W.M.,. Photographs by Alfred Stieglitz, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Feb., 1929), pp. 44-45

pg. 8

dominant mode of avant-garde art without returning to figurative

painting. The photograph, with its special relation to reality, provided

a solution...' Dawn Ades 19766

Chapter 1 Semantics of the Form: A Brief History of Photographic

Manipulation.

This essay will examine the lineage of German photomontage from the techniques of the medium’s British ancestors to its American peers. From photography’s beginning in the early 19th century this pioneering medium had difficulty finding its place on the scale ranging from artistic representations, naturalism and representing reality. The reasons for this will be explored in both a socio-political and pragmatic context: the pace at which photographers explored their social and artistic remit were hindered by not only the political climates of their time but were policed by ideas of acceptability held by artistic institutions and by the limitations of the technology they possessed.

This essay will also later explore notions of truth in line with the critiques of Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin. Both writers stated that although documentary photography may aspire to be a truthful visual record of reality that without context the image can be corrupted by aestheticism, summarised by Mark Durden’s writings on Benjamin: ‘Only if photographs are combined with captions, thus preventing vagueness and stereotypes from dominating their representation of reality, can they become revealing tools in a visual struggle for the identification of social conditions and the enemies of progress.’7 As such this essay will examine each photographer’s preclusion to truth and what steps were taken to mediate their meanings, it will also critique and question photographers who negated engaging with and creating work of social calibre.6 Ades, D., Photomontage, Thames and Hudson, London, 1976, p. 15.7 Durden, M. (ed.), Fifty Key Writers on Photography, 'Walter Benjamin', Routledge, London & New York, 2013, p.46.

pg. 9

Photographic portraits, as painted portraits before them, came to be a marker of class. The daguerreotype (plate 1) was the first widely used photographic process, dominating the market from the 1840's to the late 1860's. The daguerreotype process used highly toxic mercury, although the risks of mercury exposure were known precautions were rarely taken to prevent health risks for photographers. Henry Peach Robinson (Plate 4), took ill and later died from exposure to these chemicals.

The daguerreotype was unsuitable for documenting un-staged or bustling live events, requiring still subjects and a ten-minute exposure time even in brilliant sunshine. The resultant image plate itself lacked stability, requiring special housing to protect it from dust and errant hands, as seen in plate 2 the plates were easily tarnished. Daguerreotypes copies could be made by re-daguerreotyping the original or through lithography and etching but in essence were one off images. Similarly, the collodion wet plate process that would later have its turn commanding the market was unstable; it

pg. 10

Plate 1: Unknown Artist,

American School, Occupational

Portrait of a Salesman, three

quarter length, seated, displaying

his wares, around 1850 and 1860,

daguerreotype, Library of

Congress Prints and Photographs

Division Washington.

Plate 2: Unidentified Artist,

American School, Unidentified

Woman, three quarter length

portrait, full face, seated, with

arm on table with tablecloth,

between 1850 and 1860,

daguerreotype, Library of

Congress Prints and Photographs

Division Washington.

pg. 11

Plate 3: Henry Peach Robinson, British, When the Day's Work is Done, 1877, albumen silver, 560mm x 745mm, The J.Paul Getty Museum.

Plate 4: Unknown Artist, American School, circular early 'snapshooter' images, 1890-92,

286 cyanotypes and gelatin silver prints, 283mm x 368mm x 280mm, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

pg. 12

pg. 13

required development within 15 minutes of exposure time, and exposure time was still long making it largely unsuitable for portrait work, the resultant images again were prone to deterioration.

In 1888 the Kodak Company released its 'snapshooter' (Plate 3), this camera was the first with potential for documentary photography, thanks to commercialisation it was widely available to the general public. Although this new camera brought wider access for the ‘masses’ to create images, these cameras remained largely the preserve of the mid to upper classes. As such the socio-historic stories that these images provide us with are of little worth other than as demonstrations of what leisure and domestic time was like for the upper classes, excluding the realities of the much higher populated working class. The Heilbrunn Timeline marks the lack of skill required: 'The Kodak Number One camera, first marketed in 1888, made photography a viable hobby for even the least technically inclined. Pre-loaded with film, its shutter fixed at one speed and focal range at one setting, and innocent of even the crudest viewfinder, the "detective" camera prompted millions to translate their daily experience into pictures.'8 This access threatened the livelihood of many portraitists, in response to the expansion of availability; those still using plate processes celebrated their stance as masters of the old image making style Petr Tausk notes that this was the point of distinction between amateur and artist: '[photographers] welcomed these complicated fine print processes. Thus because of its form it was immediately possible to distinguish an artistic photograph from a simple snapshot.'9

Combination printing, the first recognisable instance of photomontaging, was a technique of developing multiple negatives to create one composition widely used throughout the 19th century. H.P Robinson (b.1830 d.1901, British) frequently used combination printing explaining 'in early photographic processes it was nearly impossible to obtain in one exposure, both sharp foreground details and interesting skies.'10 However, he also used this technique in his narrative images, such as When the Days Work is Done (Plate 4), composed from 6 negatives11. John Taylor wrote of the way that Robinson mediated pervading ideas of the Ruskin school of thought, appreciating many moments of truth to nature and fidelity in one composition could be equally valid to one moment in one image, 'Coleridge's idea ‘to admire on principle’ seems to have been used by Robinson to suggest both that the photographer submit to nature, and also that he recognize that art regulated by laws is not necessarily antagonistic to nature. 'Imitation' and 'Originality' depended upon the delicate compromise between the acceptance of nature and the choice to photograph it only at the right moment.'12

8 In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. [accessed http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1997.54. October 20069 Tausk, P., Photography in the 20th Century, English ed, Focal Press, London, 1980, p.19..10 Robinson, H.P., as quoted in ibid, p. 11.11 As cited in sale description of the image, Bonhams, [online] www.bonhams.com/auctions/16854/lot/157/12 Taylor, J., Henry Peach Robinson and Victorian Theory, History of Photography, Vol 3, Issue 4, 1979, p. 295.pg. 14

The unnatural lighting in When the Days Work is Done, see the various highlight points, is due to each subject being individually lit for its own shoot. It was due to these supposedly deviant practices that Robinson received criticism from the Royal Photographic Society who did not approve of photo manipulation. In response he helped to found The Linked Ring: a photographic brotherhood, in 1892.

Moments of empirical clarity came in the form of photographing collections; but were disparate in other subjects. Martin Barnes, Senior Curator of Photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum remarks that large swathes of their 19th century collection are factual records of collected items and architecture.13 For a time P.H Emerson (b.1856 d.1936, British) had promoted naturalism and his passionate advocation resulted in a process creating a soft grain and large tonal range. In the beginning of his career he had wished to emulate how we see with the eye, however around 1890 he retracted his earlier views, publishing The Death of Naturalistic Photography. '...from then on, his work grew increasingly contrived and idyllic' (author's italics) McConkey writes in Impressionism in Britain 'often based on literary sources...'14 1892 saw him become a fellow founding member of The Linked Ring.

Alfred Stieglitz (b.1864 d.1946, American, schooled Germany) was a modernist photographer and international Linked Ring affiliate. Part of the reactionary American 'Photo-Secession' movement, he sought to create a clear divide between amateur work and fine art photography. In the first decade of the 20th century art photographers such as Stieglitz flourished. His peers who sought to find a place for art photography for the most part managed to achieve vilification of their practices and Stieglitz became a polemic figure in the American photography community. Their triumph of pictorialism lived on through the next generation of art photographers, notably Walker Evans in his images of streets and his portraits.

The construction of an image could achieve epic beauty or a heart wrenching narrative; however, vague soft imagery and odes to architecture classic motifs of Stieglitz did little to deal with the complications of social injustices. In the early 20th century increasing numbers of people felt that due to its natural preclusion to truth and ability to record events quickly and clearly, that photography had a duty to record the social world as it really was. Photographic technology now had the ability to meet this aim, and mainstream and political medias were creating an aesthetic culture to critique and question. From 1910 photomontage’s development, with its particular penchant for rendering realities and posing question, was inevitable.

Lewis Hine (b.1974 d.1940, American) plates 6 and 9, was a photographer of high calibre recognised for his skill among his peers. Hine taught Paul Strand for 5 years before 1913 and the legacy of this time is clear in his early street portraits which have more social

13 Barnes, M., Photography and the Collection of the V&A Museum, Talk, Peninsular Arts, 2014.14 McConkey, K., Impressionism in Britain, Yale University Press, London, 1995, p. 122.pg. 15

impetus than his later formalist and pictorialism tendencies of the twenties (when he became more involved with Stieglitz). Hine was a social reformer and official photography of the Child Labour Committee who used photography and text to affect social change, recording in particular the use of children in the cotton industry. The Getty remarks on the precocious nature of his subject matter: 'Declaring that he "wanted to show things that had to be corrected," he was one of the earliest photographers to use the photograph as a documentary tool'15. Hine's photographs of child labour were more than visual records of condition: they were tools for change.

Plate 5: P.H Emerson, British, In the Barley Harvest, 1890, photogravure mounted on paper, 243mm x 237xx, gifted to the Royal Academy by Emerson.

15The J. Paul Getty Collection, Lewis Hine, [online] http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/artists/1566/lewis-w-hine-american-1874-1940/ [Accessed 11/02/2015]pg. 16

Plate 6: Lewis Hine, American, Furman Owens,

12-years-old. Can't read. Doesn't

know his

A,B,C's. Said,

"Yes I want to

learn but can't

when I work all

the time."

Been in the mills 4 years, 3 years

in the Olympia

Mill. Columbia, South Carolina,

1908-1912, variable dimensions, courtesy of TheHistoryPlace online image bank.

Plate 7 (above) and 8

(below): Hugo Van Werden, German, Friedrich Krupp Cast Steel Works, Essen 1872-73, albumen prints from

wet collodion negatives, 430mm x 2473mm, gift of H. & R. Rieger to the Museum of Modern Art.

pg. 17

August Sander (b.1876 d.1964, German) was one of the first documentary photographers to task themselves with truly representing the social spectrum of Germany. Sander’s most active period began in 1902 following time as a miner, completing his national service and undertaking a brief period studying painting in Dresden. His work was halted during WW1 but he resumed it at the close of the conflict returning to Cologne where he met a ‘...group of Progressive Artists, joined the local photographers’ guild, and became acquainted with Franz Wilhelm Seiwert, a painter ‘who felt that art should reflect society’s structure.’ It was through his association with Seiwert and other artists that Sander began to alter his photographic process... Sander eschewed his previous pictorialist tendencies during the 1890s of retouching the negative and producing atmospheric images in soft focus.'16

He had initially aimed to record the characters of the people of the Westerwald, but expanded the project aiming to create a portrait of Germany's people titled: Man of The Twentieth Century. The project was a visual documentation of the German people, but the ramifications of the project became much larger than mere aesthetic record. Sander is credited with having artistry both for perception of character and for how he relayed the essential features of these characters through his photography. His technique was simple an subtle, but by manipulating pose, dress and setting Sander created a rich dialogue about the eclectic face and feeling of the German people. These variations

16 Mongelluzzo, K., Weimar Faces: August Sander’s Man of the Twentieth Century versus the Nazi Ideal, Pennesylvania State University, 2012, p. 3.pg. 18

became narratives about the sitters and about society as Reinhold Misselbeck writes: 'The unusual quality of his portraiture is, above all, its systematic manner; this made the work a well-designed unity, not only in a sociological and philosophical sense, but also in photographic terms. Sander’s portraits, whether half- or full-length, are always set in a simple environment. He gave a controlled and intentional hint at the origin and profession of the sitter through the background or through clothes, hairstyle and gesture.'17

His documentary photography work was more than objective depiction, and although not undertaken as an act of revolution like Dada it regardless it represented unsavoury realities to the Nazis. Images such as Plate 10 were provocative to the fascist sensibilities of the racist political party. The muscular mobilised Indian body, confronting the photographer with an active jaunty gaze juxtaposed with the sideways glancing leisure time of the plump German woman. In his series reality and transparency the Nazis found issue, his work did not fit the reality they wished to mould, 'Although this cyclic model of society was anything but progressive, Sander came into conflict with the Nazis. The political activities of his son Erich were also held against him, and he had to interrupt work on this project between 1933 and 1939, when he devoted himself mainly to the themes of the Rhine countryside and the city of Cologne'18.

Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin were prominent spokespersons against pictorialism and new objectivity; they identified the shortcomings of truth searching in photography 'Documentary photography always had a powerful claim to truth: it aspired, literally, to be a print of reality, virtually unmediated. But both disputed this claim to realism, Brecht noted how an apparently objective photograph of the Krupp

Plate 9: Lewis Hine, American, Seafood Workers: Cutting fish in a sardine cannery. Large sharp knives are used with a

cutting and sometimes chopping motion. The slippery floors and benches and careless bumping into each other increase the

liability of accidents. "The salt water gits into the cuts and they ache," said one boy. Eastport, Maine, 1908-1912, unknown

dimensions, courtesy of TheHistoryPlace online image bank.

17 Misselbeck, R., August Sander, Grove Art Dictionary Online, Oxford University Press 2009, [Online] http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=5145 [Accessed 10/02/2015].18 ibid. pg. 19

pg. 20

Plate 10: August Sander, German, Indian Man and

German Woman, 1926, gelatin silver print, 284mm x 215mm, Gift of the photographer to the

Museum of Modern Art.

works (Plates 8 and 9) would reveal little or nothing of its social relations.'19 Sander and Hine both created photographs that documented and expressed more than just an aesthetic or a simple

ideology. Through their setting up of the image and their titling, they attempted to obtain a fidelity to truth. In terms of successes, though I would argue that the form of Hine's work was more successful.

Hine mediated Brecht and Benjamin's complaints about new objectivity by combining the harsh images with facts about those in his portraits of working children. This combination of text is interesting, because it solidifies the reality, removes the objectivity and creates a focus on what the contents of the image are, not what the images look like. Hine was one of the early documentary photographers; but he could also be considered as an early photomontagist too. Constructivist, Sergei Tretyakov defined photomontage as 'If the photograph, under the influence of text, expresses not simply 19 Fer, B., Batchelor, D. and Wood, P., Realism, rationalism, surrealism. Art between the wars, New Haven: Yale University Press, in association with the Open University, 1993, p. 300.pg. 21

the fact which it shows but also the social tendency expressed by the fact, then this is already a photomontage'20. This fits Hine’s oeuvre perfectly: Interior of Tobacco Shed, Hawthorn Farm. Girls in foreground are 8, 9, and 10 years old. The 10 yr. old makes 50 cents a day 1905/1910 (Plate 5), 50 cents in 1917 had the same buying power as $7.25 in 200021. The inclusion of text clarifies what we are seeing, and orders that we engage with the facts.

Hine's work mirrored the trend in Europe at this time for pictorial clarity; photographers were departing from grainy and soft focused images towards clear imagery with clear subject. The first decade of the 20th century had continued to foster experimentation, the second however precluded to a change in style, which, partially as a reaction to abstract avant-garde trends of the time and partly in reaction to the political turmoil, created the tendency for sharper images.

WWI, 1914-1918, changed the way in which news and images were circulated. Documentary photography had an increasingly important role to play: existing both as a visual text to understand and translate events but also as a way for artists to transmute their experiences. Photography possessed a unique power as it had a perceived natural propensity for providing empirical data due to the way is so closely mirrored the way the eye perceives; this trust was precisely what made it suitable for corrupting or constructing a political/social message. Just as Brecht and Benjamin had bemoaned non-descript aestheticism and the way it could mask a dreadful or difficult reality, photography could also be a tool for propaganda.

Roland Barthes analysed the mystique of political photography summarising that photos of candidates are about selling the viewer an ideal through the manipulation of pose, setting, dress and expression. The tools Sander used in his portraits to express a truth about his sitters were similarly used to express an ideal: 'Some candidates for Parliament adorn their electoral prospectus with a portrait. This presupposes that photography has a power to convert which must be analysed. To start with, the effigy of a candidate establishes a personal link between him and the voters; the candidate does not only offer a programme for judgment, he suggests a physical climate, a set of daily choices expressed in a morphology, a way of dressing, a posture.'22

20 Tausk, P., Photography in the 20th Century, English ed, Focal Press, London, 1980, p. 22.21 Inflation Calculator 22 Barthes, R., Photography and Electoral Appeal, Mythologies, The Noonday Press, New York, 1972, p. 91.pg. 22

Plate 11: John Heartfield, German, N'ayez pas peur - il est végétarien/ Do not be afraid, he is vegetarian, 1936, photomontage, dimensions variable.

pg. 23

The first instances of what is now commonly recognised as photomontage occurred during WWI, where text from newspapers was collaged to send covert messages that untraceable by the army. This aspect of the practice based on re-appropriation and re-distribution is what makes photomontage truly powerful: photomontage used the controlled systems prescribed to the people to rebel. For the Dadaists aesthetics were of secondary or very little importance, the message presented to the audience was of most importance, Dadaist Richard Huelsenbeck wrote: 'Dada for the first time has ceased to take an aesthetic attitude towards life, and this it accomplishes by tearing all the slogans of ethics, culture and inwardness, which are merely cloaks for weak muscles, into their components.'23. Dada’s work was intrinsically linked to the present; it dealt with a world of propaganda in an age of ever-faster media, and used the methods of the powers above to undermine them.

John Heartfield’s incendiary practice earned him a place as one of the most celebrated Dadaist, a inordinately skilled practitioner of the photomontage technique his appropriated images of Hitler were the challenging backbone of his critique. Heartfield would take a glorified image from its propagandist framework and create a new brutish and more honest composition to show the fascist leader in a new light (Plate 11). Through subverting the readily available image of the Nazi leader he created a new form of truth, expressing realities of the regime. He asks the audience to consider the potential brutality of Hitler the ‘harmless vegetarian’, or the glory of guns over the food. The most basic resource of life counter posed with industrial war aesthetics (Plate 12). As Foucault, Heartfield and the Dadaists refused to accept the status quo unquestioningly 'We must know more about power to discover where and how it touches photography. We must know more about the nature of resistance and struggle if we are to understand how photographic practice might be invested in them... ''Power in the West'' Foucault says, ‘‘…is what displays itself most and hides itself best.'''24 Photomontage is a visual documentation of their struggle with social disorder and fascism.

There are aspects of photomontage that clearly compliment the techniques employed by the pictorialists, yet there is equally a clear and staunch difference in the way that they employed the medium and to what end both created 'realities' within their picture planes. Photomontage is a closer relation to Hine’s or Sanders’ work in its conscious effort to deal with left wing working class complexities, 'Only if photographs are combined with captions, thus preventing vagueness and stereotypes from dominating their representation of reality, can they become revealing tools in a visual struggle for the identification of social conditions and the enemies of progress.''25 Although the

23 Huelsenbeck, R., 'First German Dada Manifesto/Collective Dada Manifesto', Der Zweemann, Hanover, 1919, in Harrison, C., Wood, P. (eds), Art in theory: 1900-2000, Malden, Blackwell, 2003, p.257.24 Tagg, J., The Burden of Representation, 2nd ed, Palgrave Macmillan, 1988.p. 67.25 Durden, M. (ed.), Fifty Key Writers on Photography, 'Walter Benjamin', Routledge, London & New York, 2013, p. 42. pg. 24

pictorialists aimed to transgress control of images their aims were ultimately of aesthetic issue and dealt with little of the social realm of life.

The political climate in Germany brought about the conditions for the controversial work of the Dadaists, photomontage sought to create truth through the medium of visually glorified lies. The alteration of photographs however has consistently been a form of expression, which has exalted arguments consistently from its creation. I conclude that the issue for many, an issue that pervades to this day, is that photography appeals to us in a

way that elicits our trust. Photography invites us to accept it as empirical and omnipotent, in a way that painting

cannot claim; as the old adages go, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words', and ‘the camera doesn’t lie’. To

remove this safety, to accept that photography as a malleable tool to purvey an ideology, makes the whole

business rather unsafe.

pg. 25

Plate 12: John Heartfield, German, Hurrah, die Butter, ist alle!/ Hurrah, the butter is all gone!, 193,

photomontage, published on the front page of the AIZ in 1935.

pg. 26

Reich Agit-Prop Conference has identified the following deficiencies in Der Knuppel:

1: Der Knuppel has not obliged itself in many cases t find the expressive means appropriate for the simple worker.

2: It gives precedence to 'art' over agitation.

3: Accommodation to political struggles of the Party are often neglected.

4: Questions having to do with the workplace are not addressed.

5: Caricatures refer to the contributors to the journal itself... They have no interest for the worker.

6: The ideological content of the drawings (among others, also Grosz's) is merely an anarchistic criticism of the disintegration of

bourgeois society that does not give expression

to our Communist criticism and ideology.26

26 Tenth Party Congress of the KPD in July 1925, in McCloskey, B., George Grosz and the Communist Party. Art and Radicalism in Crisis 1918-1936, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1997, p. 121pg. 27

Plate 1: Press Photo in Steglitzer Anzeiger, George Grosz (right), Wieland Herzfelde (left) in Court, 4/12/1930, image courtesy of Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin.

Chapter 2 Grosz, Heartfield and the Problematic Party.

'For us, art is not an end in itself...but it is an opportunity for the true perception and criticism of the times we live in.' Dada poet, Hugo Ball.27

This chapter continues to explore the relationship of politics with Realism, investigating George Grosz’ (b.1893 d.1959, German) drawings and John Heartfield’s (b.1891 d.1968, German) photomontage in the context of the artist’s and artwork’s reception by the Communist Party.

As explored in Chapter 1, the term realism is complicated and, crucially, objective and subjective. Bertolt Brecht (b. 1898 d. 1956, German) who was not a Party member believed that realism should have a engaged and reactionary relationship with the age in which it is created, as Terry Lovell summarised, his brand of realism 'was defined exclusively in terms of its goal, rather than its conventions.'28, where as others such as Georg Lukács (b. 1885 d.1971, Hungarian) member of the Hungarian Communist Party maintained that realism should be adapted from existing bourgeois styles and formats, a notion Brecht and his peers deemed retrograde: 'Either, on the one hand we express contempt for 'pure art' and its perfection of form; ... On the other hand, we acknowledge the aesthetic and attempt to reconcile with it a 'tendency' that is taken from the realm of 'social' or 'political'.'29 this notion of amending existing (bourgeois) aesthetics was much more closely attuned to Soviet sanctioned art forms.

The Soviet Union has one style of state sanctioned art, Socialist Realism as seen in plate 2. This art form was institutionalised by Stalin, and only work that was constructed to perpetuate the notion of the utopian communistic society, with the strong backs of the nation led by a proud and omnipotent leader were condoned: '...no single individual can possess god like perfect knowledge. It finds its nearest expression in the vanguard of the class, the Party'30 writes Lovell. This

27 Ball, H., as quoted in Learn MoMA: DADA, [online]moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/dada [Accessed 03/02/2015]. 28 Lovell, T., Pictures of Reality: Aesthetics, Politics and Pleasure, British Film Institute, Kent, 1980, p. 77.29 Lukács, G., Tendency or Partisanship?, 1932, in Harrison, C., and Wood, P. (eds), Art in theory: 1900-2000, Malden, Blackwell, 2003, p. 415.30 Lovell, T., Pictures of Reality: Aesthetics, Politics and Pleasure, British Film Institute, Kent, 1980, p. 69.pg. 28

kind of propaganda became increasingly prolific through the 1930's with Stalin making it the official style of the Russian Party in 1934.

A parallel form of art existed in other left wing European countries, utilised by Marxist artists, Social Realism. Although the term is quite similar the crucial difference as recognised by the Grove art dictionary is that generally Social Realism is a grassroots, democratic process rather than the top down prescription of socio-politically engaged aesthetics 'Social Realism, in contrast, represents a democratic tradition of independent socially motivated artists, usually of left-wing or liberal persuasion.'31

Social Realism, in its most successful form is an accurate translation of Marxist art theory: namely art as a tool for expression for and by the proletariat. Print could faithfully reproduce images from around 1878 with the photogravure press, and sophisticated lithography had been available from 1903. Print had become a reliable revolutionary tool and was crucial due to the way it democratised messages, as Brecht’s wrote: '...artwork needs to demystify the dominant power, [and] utilise forms of contemporary popular/mass culture.'32 The Red Group, official artists of the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) stated in their 1924 manifesto that they wished to democratise the art process to empower the proletariat 'Artistic Training organised within each district;... guidance in preparing posters and placards for demonstrations etc.'33 Their role was to create communistic tendenzkunst (tendency art). However as I will explore later, the KPD's interventions and complaints about the Red Group's work would result in the blurring of Social and Socialist Realism and the persecution of the movement's best artists.

George Grosz, alongside his companion John Heartfield and his brother writer Weiland Herzfelde of the Malik Verlag Press were Dadaists and members of the KPD from 1919 onwards. They joined the party after they were inspired by the 1918 November Revolution and the events of the Spartacist Uprising. They received their membership cards from Spartacist leader Rosa Luxemburg herself.

Their motives for joining the Party are clear when we consider the parallels between the Party’s aims and Dada's stance on aesthetics, the Red Group’s manifesto stated; ''They share the conviction that a good Communist was a 31Todd jr, J., G., Social Realism, Grove Art Online, Oxford University Press 2009. 32 Brecht, B,. On the Formalist Character of the Theory of Realism, in Adorno, T. W., et al., Aesthetics and Politics, Verso, 1980. p 72.33 Red Group, 'Red Manifesto', 1924, in Harrison, C., Wood, P. (eds), Art in theory: 1900-2000, Malden, Blackwell, 2003, p. 407.pg. 29

Communist first, and only secondly a technician, artist, and so on. They believe that all knowledge and skills are tools placed in the service of the class struggle.'34 Richard Huelsenbeck's First Dada manifesto 1916 similarly referenced inclusive socially engaged practices in the wider context of de-establishing bourgeois tendencies in art. Dadaist's critiqued culture, exposing the Weimar regime for the faulty and failing system it was, and this critical commentary was more important than creating simple, pleasing images: 'Dada for the first time has

ceased to take an aesthetic attitude towards life, and this it accomplishes by

Plate 2: Unknown Artist, Stalin'n'spirit inspire and defend our Army and Motherland!, photomontage, coutesy of communisme-bolchevisme online archive.

34 ibid.pg. 30

Plate 3: George Grosz, Be Submissive to the Authorities, lithograph, 1926, image courtesy of the Southbank Centre.

tearing all the slogans of ethics, culture and inwardness, which are merely cloaks for weak muscles, into their components.'35

George Grosz was one of the most prolific and recognised Red Group artists, and as such held a large balance of power within the group. His works, with their penchant for pithy typecasting of base bourgeois characters were popular, but crucially also clear, Hanna Arendt wrote of

35 Richard Huelsenbeck 'First German Dada Manifesto'/Collective Dada manifesto' Originally published in Der Zweemann, Hanover, 1919, p.257.pg. 31

them: 'George Grosz's cartoons seemed to us not satires but realistic reportage: we knew these types, they were all around us.' '36

Increasing critique from the Party and the threat of the Nazis caused Grosz to emigrate to America in 1933. Beth Irwin-Lewis explains: 'By 1923 Grosz was undoubtedly the KPD's foremost artist; between 1924 and 1932, however he was called on repeatedly to justify his work to Party critics unsympathetic to his independent views.'37 Grosz was not just an agent of the Party's aims. He maintained an independent Marxist voice outside of the Party and dedicated himself to depicting the truth as he saw it writing 'What they mean is that since the working class is growing one should show the growing proletariat as a 'positive idea'. But I don' think it is necessary to meet the requirements of a 'Hurrah-Bolshevism'... I at least cannot imagine the proletariat any other way than the way I draw it.'38 Irwin-Lewis wrote of the independence of print houses and printers as Grosz continued to work throughout this time with Wieland Herzfelde, 'The Malik Verlag was committed to Marxism. Though it was a communist press it was not the press of the KPD. Determined that the press be a independent communist voice, Herzfelde refused financial backing from the Soviet Union or the party.'39

The KPD sought out a nationalised standardised communism; they wanted art that they could police, and an artist they could ensure would tow the Party line. Grosz ultimately refused to totally assimilate to the Party ideology. Lukács' philosophies explored by Lovell go some way to outline the KPD's issue with this: 'Lukács argued that only the writers in possession of a genuine ideology could produce great works.'40 One of the complaints levied at Grosz was that his works were too dense, too confusing for the common man [sic]. I propose that it is not mere coincidence that the increasing critique from the Party coincided with the increasing involvement and interest of Stalin into the KPD and the merging with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

36 Hannah Arendt as quoted in Irwin-Lewis, B., George Grosz: Art and Politics in the Weimar Republic, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1991, p. 8.37 Irwin-Lewis, B., George Grosz: Art and Politics in the Weimar Republic, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1991, p 49. 38 Grosz, G., 'My life', Prints and Drawings of the Weimar Republic Exhibition Catalouge, Stuttgart 1985, in Harrison, C., and Wood, P. (eds), Art in theory: 1900-2000, Malden, Blackwell, 2003, p. 41139Irwin-Lewis, B., George Grosz: Art and Politics in the Weimar Republic, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1991, p. 122.40 Lovell, T., Pictures of Reality: Aesthetics, Politics and Pleasure, British Film Institute, Kent, 1980, p. 73.pg. 32

Plate 3: John Heartfield, The Meaning of the Hitler Salute: A little man asks for large gifts, Cover of AIZ, Vol 11, no. 42, October 16th 1932.

pg. 33

During a 5 month visit to the Soviet Union as an honoured guest 1922 Grosz was particularly dismayed by its bureaucracy and faceless ruling class, Irwin-Lewis also wrote of the difficulties he faced 'Grosz remained an individualist whose anarchic and pessimistic streak became more marked after 1923... That the party was undergoing increasing regimentation/bolshevism under Stalin's direction made Grosz' position in the party difficult.’41

Heartfield (plate 3) was also a dedicated Marxist. His role within the Red Group entailed helping to make placards and posters for recruitment and action, and teaching others these skills. Heartfield generally had a less problematic relationship with the KPD, and the reason for this was largely medium based. As discussed in chapter 1, photographs with their particular way of replicating the world illicit much more trust, with photograph’s proximity to the way we view the world through our own eyes, there is a tendency to believe the sight more truthful and to be of higher empirical value. Brecht also understood as viewers we like images to be pleasurable, the act of identification, such as remembering the lyrics to a song, have been shown to make us feel clever, and as we understand a photographs content we again feel pleasure, Lovell write 'Brecht's great strength was his recognition that politically effective art is also art that is popular and pleasurable'42

The Party saw Grosz's work as representative of the artist's eye upon the world, rather than a depiction of their aims, as William M. Irvins explains; 'Until photography and its derivative processes made their appearance it was impossible for a human being to make a picture of anything that did not tell more about the man [sic] who made the picture than it did about the things represented in the picture. For the first time was made possible such a thing as an objective picture which could be used as a scientific datum with respect to the object depicted.'43 Perhaps it was the cult of character that the Party found unfavourable; their complaints about his work mounted as his fame was growing exponentially as McCloskey noted: 'In 1925, Grosz's stature as a significant contemporary artist was confirmed by the inclusion of his works in Gustav Hartlaub's celebrated New Objectivity exhibition.'44 It was around this time that

41Irwin-Lewis, B., The Artist as Social Critic, University Gallery, University of Mnnesota Press, Minnaepolis, 1980, p. 35. 42 Lovell, T., Pictures of Reality: Aesthetics, Politics and Pleasure, British Film Institute, Kent, 1980, p. 77.43 Ivins, W.M, Photographs by Alfred Stieglitz, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Feb., 1929), pp. 44-4544 McCloskey, B., George Grosz and the Communist Party. Art and Radicalism in Crisis 1918-1936, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1997, p. 123.pg. 34

the Party began to query whether he really held communism before art, challenging his communistic convictions.

Photographs, however, were seen more as information, information that could be manipulated to disrupt and alert the proletariat's view of what was happening in the higher echelons of power.

pg. 35

(above) Plate 4: George Grosz, Made in Germany, lithograph, 1920, 290mm x 249mm, image courtesy of MoMA online archives. (below) Plate 5: John Heartfield, After 10 Years, Fathers and Sons, AIZ cover,

photomontage, 1934.

.

pg. 36

'Heartfield insisted that proletarian artists must understand the immense propagandistic possibilities of photography and begin to make conscious use of it.'45 Beth Irwin-Lewis, 1980.

Most everyone had access to printed media and the photograph was a language that the proletariat would be familiar with. Photomontage was a unique approach in the way that it appropriated photographic bourgeois communication and manipulated it so it could disrupt the false messages. Heartfield’s images were harder to police too, a famous incident surrounding the Malik Verlag window front display demonstrates this succinctly. In the windows they had installed an anti-war display, featuring After 10 years, Fathers and Sons (Plate 5), ration cards and an image that caused particular offence, depicting the Crown Prince playing tennis, accompanied with images of crippled veterans and war cemeteries. An offended German nationalist complained and '...attempted to remove these pictures from the storefront window’ they attempted to police the images under rules regarding the circulation of provocative war material, as McCloskey writes however, they were unsuccessful: ‘…in protest at the police action Die Rote Fahne noted that many of the photographs in question had already been circulated in various forms including the USPD's Freie Welt.'46

Artists were involved in illustrating book covers and working with Communist presses other than Malik Verlag. Heartfield, for instance also worked with the New German Press and for the International Workers Aid. Neither Heartfield nor Grosz were strictly vessels for the Red Group or the Agit-Prop division of the KPD. Both utilised printed media as a tool for communication that challenged bourgeois control. However, though Heartfield’s montages were applauded for their appropriation of bourgeois materials, Grosz’s applications of satirical cartoons were not similarly appreciated. McCloskey explores the issue writing 'The appropriate use of satire once again became the centre of the controversy in Grosz's relationship to the Party, particularly as satire became an ever more popular mode of expression in the bourgeois entertainment industry.'47 Both Heartfield and Grosz de-established and democratised art through appropriating bourgeois mediums and modes of communication, but only one did this through the medium of photography.

45 Lewis, B. I., The Artist as Social Critic, University Gallery, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1980, p. 38.46 McCloskey, B., George Grosz and the Communist Party. Art and Radicalism in Crisis 1918-1936, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1997, p. 116.47 ibid, p. 123. pg. 37

Heartfield re-arranged facts and photographs and his style matched the pace of Fascist propaganda, Heartfield said of photography: 'The Pencil has proved to be too slow a medium: the lies which were propagated through the bourgeois press evolved a colossal tempo at this time. It made use of photography- the strongest medium for elective agitation on the masses.'48 Many art historians, such as Dawn Ades, agree that photography, particularly photomontage held a special position in its accessibility, Ades writes: 'In a post Dada world photography is used because it is the most accessible visual medium for a non-specialist mass audience.'49 Photomontage appropriated other images, the KPD could easily appropriate these photomontage works for the cause. Heartfield was a famous artist in his own right, but his images said more of events closer to the real lives of others and less about Heartfield himself than Grosz's through their aesthetic language.

I believe that Grosz's popularity and acclaim threatened the order of the increasingly bureaucratic KPD, the Party, like classic realist supporter Georg Lukács, wished for disengaged yet informative works about the status-quo as Lukács wrote: 'The goal for all great art is to provide a picture of reality in which the contradiction between appearance and reality, the particular and the general, the immediate and the conceptual, etc. [sic], is so resolved that the two converge into a spontaneous integrity.'50 Grosz's images were not resolved because his daily political life was not resolved. The anger and disgust in his drawings was too clear, too humanistic to purvey a message simply about the glory to be obtained through joining the Party. Photomontage was seen to support the cause of creating inspiration and action through a closer approximation and demonstration of truth. The KPD was certainly rife with its own issues, but the Party realised that photography when altered by photomontage was the closest tool to achieving a clear message, easily understood and closer to the reality of life that needed to be reckoned with.

48 Heartfield, J., as quoted in Lewis, B. I., The Artist as Social Critic, University Gallery, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1980, p. 37.49 Ades, D., Photomontage, Thames and Hudson, London, 1976, p. 24.50 Lukács, G., as quoted in Lovell, T., Pictures of Reality: Aesthetics, Politics and Pleasure, British Film Institute, Kent, 1980, p. 71.pg. 38

'Realism is distinct from both mimesis and verisimilitude

in this sense because it is not

simply a similarity to the world, nor is

it simply a mechanistic

reproduction of it. Rather it is "real"

in the sense that it captures not

simply what is empirically

existent, but also the social forces and drives that

animate it.' Micheal Thompson, 2012.

pg. 39

Chapter 3Georg Lukács, Bertolt Brecht and the Marxist quandary.

'I am speaking from experience when I say that one need not be afraid to produce daring, unusual things for the proletariat so long as they deal with its real situation. There will always be people of culture, connoisseurs of art, who will interject: 'Ordinary people do not understand that.' But people will push these persons impatiently aside and come to a direct understanding with artists.' Bertolt Brecht 51

'He does not need to distort the reality, to adjust it or 'tendentiously' touch it up, for his depiction, if it is correct and dialectical, is precisely built up on a knowledge of those tendencies (in the proper, Marxian sense of the term).' Georg Lukács 52

Karl Marx never concluded or clarified his theories on art; leaving art historians, cultural critics and philosophers alike to draw their own conclusions on his theories. Idealogies from other writings such as Das Kapital's were drafted in to plug the gaps and to create a coherent Marxist art history. As with all ideologies, interpretation creates multifaceted schools of thought, which is clearly seen in the dialogue between Lukács and Brecht whose differing utilisations of the ‘fragmentary and thin’53 remnants of Marx’s aesthetic theory form the primary points of discussion in this chapter. Following from the dialogue initiated in the first two chapters, this essay will explore this didactic and problematic pair. Through the exploration of three artworks dating from 1875 to 1930, the political nature of the images and their relation to Lukács and Brecht's theories will be investigated as an avenue to find the fidelity in their theoretical outlooks. This system will in turn support my hypothesis that photomontage (the amalgamation of more than one photo together, or the partnership of photo and text) is the most successful tool to reflect Social Reality.

Eugene Lunn identifies succinctly in his introduction the crucial dynamic that caused much of the dispute: ‘…the writers came to Marxism only after having been sophisticated critics or practitioners of the modern arts and after developing strong cultural, aesthetic, and social views, both of which experiences were to influence their various constructions 51 Brecht, B., Popularity and Realism, in Adorno, T. W.,et al., Aesthetics and Politics, Verso, 1980. p. 84 52 Lukács, G., 'Tendency' or ‘Partisanship?’, 1932, in Harrison, C., and Wood, P. (eds), Art in theory: 1900-2000, Malden, Blackwell, 2003 p.416.53 Lunn, E., Marxism and Modernism, University of California Press, Berkeley & London, p. 3. 1982.pg. 40

of a Marxist aesthetics; they did not merely apply a preformed Marxism to the visual arts, literature or music.’54

For example Marx believed that artistic output had a particular power, as it operates as both an object and a stimulant (for ideas or feelings). The work can thus create its own demand, through causing curiosity or a realisation of some notion in the viewer/consumer. In order to obtain more of this thought-stimulant new art must be made, and must be made to be consumed and understood, as Marx asked: ‘Does not the pianist as he produces music and satisfies out tonal sense, also produce that sense in some respects?’55 Brecht’s Modernist interpretation of this theory encouraged the creation of progressive images. Walter Benjamin, in his notes on his conversations with Brecht recorded: ‘A Brechtian maxim: Don’t start from the good old things but the bad new ones. ‘56 Brecht supported dynamic avant-gardism, evidenced by his pioneering theatre practice, Epic (later Dialectical) Theatre. Brecht's style departed from typical notions of emotional audience immersion and instead focused on creating a detached state of self-awareness, the audience saw the message, but were prevented from getting 'wrapped up' in the action and were faced instead with a deconstructed totality. His dedication to Modernism was also evidenced in the company he kept; he was a close friend of Grosz and Heartfield. Brecht believed that progress had to arise from a bottom up artistic revolution.

Lukács, however, had a penchant for bourgeois art forms, favouring more descriptive works, uninhibited by individual style. Michael Thomson, a defender of Lukács theories wrote: ‘Lukács viewed avant-garde 'realism' with contempt as he was concerned with demonstrating issues in society as a whole, rather than through the spectrum of the individual. Individual consequence and view was no view at all.’57 Lukács recognised the quality of some work viewing that they had succeeded in ‘Writing from their own experience, they have often succeeded in developing a consistent and interesting mode of expression, a style of their own…’58 Overall though he saw artwork from Naturalism through to Surrealism as too immediate and concerned with feeling to describe a Social Reality. Lukács revered the literary and artistic works of 19th century Realism, despite it not succeed in depicting a social totality (according to Marxism doing so would expose the bourgeois class' ultimate overthrow). Further to this, and in contrast with Brecht, his theory gave primacy to both setting the character/subjects social circumstance and the person as individual, Richard L.W Clarke summarises Lukács' ideology: 'Realist writers 54 ibid.55 Marx, K., The Grundrisse, quoted in Lunn, E., Marxism and Modernism, University of California Press, Berkeley & London, p. 1256 Benjamin, W., 'Conversations with Brecht', 1934, Frankfurt, 1966, in Adorno, T. W.,et al., Aesthetics and Politics, Verso, London and New York, 1980, p. 89.57 Thompson, M. J., Realism as Anti--Reification: A defence of Lukács Aesthetic Theory, William Paterson University, 2012, p. 2.58 Lukács, G., Lukács against Bloch, in Adorno, T. W.,et al., Aesthetics and Politics, Verso, London and New York, 1980, p. 37.pg. 41

must capture this dialectic between the individual and the social, between what makes him/her a unique personality and those forces which determine his existence without regard for the individual. To be typical, in Lukács’ sense of this term, characters must therefore embody in their individual fictional existence the larger ‘world-historical’ forces peculiar to the place and time which they are supposed to inhabit '59

The following section applies Lukács' and Brecht's forms of Marxism to three case studies. Firstly let's take Gustav Caillebotte's (b.1848 d.1894, France) Les raboteurs de parquet [The Floor Planers] (Plate 1). This work was re-popularised in the 1970's and 1990's. Of note in this process of modification and canonisation was the Paris-Chicago retrospective show of 1994-1995; the influential French Modernist art historian Michael Fried credited this show with changing his mind on earlier proposed revisionist notions of Caillebotte's work. The very opening line of Fried's essay pointedly remarks upon Caillebotte's class position 'To start with the bedrock facts, Caillebotte was born to well-off bourgeois family...'60 making clear that any reading of his work is intrinsically linked with his affluence. The painting presents us with three working class men, in the process of a very labour intensive job, scraping the varnish from the floor of Caillebotte's apartment at 77 Rue de Miromesnil61

The Musée d'Orsay wrote of this piece: 'Unlike Courbet or Millet, Caillebotte does not incorporate any social, moralising or political message in his work.'62 I would argue however that this painting contains many bones of class contention and can be read as both a work of bourgeois art and as a moniker of the strength of the working class.

59 Clarke, R., "Art and Objective Truth." "Writer and Critic," and Other Essays, Kahn, A. D. ,. London: Merlin, 1970. 25-60.60 Fried, M., Caillebottes Impressionism, Representations, No. 66, Spring 1999, pp. 1-51, University of California Press, p. 1. 61 Berhaut, M., Gustave Caillebotte Biography, Grove Art Online, [Accessed 25/03/2015, Last Updated 9/07/2012]62 Gustave Caillebotte, "The Floor Planers", Musée d'Orsay entry, [online] http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/works-in-focus/search/commentaire/commentaire_id/les-raboteurs-de-parquet-7073.html [Accessed 24/03/2015]pg. 42

Gustave Caillebotte,The Floor Scrapers, 1875, Oil on canvas, 102cm x 146.5 cm, Musée d'Orsay.

In terms of a reading informed by Lukács I selected this work due to Caillebotte's reputation amongst his literary peers, as outlined by M. Berhaut for Grove Art 'He was considered one of the painters most responsive to the ideas of French Realist writers. '63 And due to his preconditions for success summarized by Paul Wood: 'In essence Lukács conceived realism as a given form, one that was at odds with all varieties of Modernism... Only a 'true' realism, based on example of the great realists of the past, could penetrate the contradictions of modern capitalism...'64 This work is an archetypical example of 19th century Realism, and as mentioned earlier, it is particularly engaging due to the multiplicity of readings it lends itself to . As part of the Impressionist cannon you can bask in the skilful verisimilitude of the light reflecting from the varnish, or the handling of the supple limbs of the Planers. As an example of bourgeois 19th century Realism (a Lukács reading) this work would be demonstrative of his family's wealth and their class power, he is above the men both as he depicts them, while standing at his canvas, and though his hiring of their labour, with his financial superiority. However, in terms of a Lukács reading this work is not ideologically complete as it fails to identify the eventual proletariat primacy.

63 Berhaut, M., Gustave Caillebotte Biography, Grove Art Online, [Accessed 25/03/2015, Last Updated 9/07/2012]64 Wood, P., Realism, rationalism, surrealism. Art between the wars, New Haven: Yale University Press, in association with the Open University, 1993. p. 324. pg. 43

However, reading from a Brechtian viewpoint the social contents of this work are aggravating, questioning the social status quo and exploring formal matters. In terms of the Brechtian Maxim to start from the' bad new ones' this painting was provocative due to its subject matter; Caillebotte's decision to paint members of the working-class did not go without query. The handling of the paint, the depiction of the bodies, is pleasing to the eye. Yet still, this is not a purely formal image, the men do not appear subordinate. The two figures on the right chat while they work, and these men enjoy strong and mobile bodies. This work could equally be about the threatening strength of the working classes. If we consider this statement from Brecht we can weigh the paintings success: 'Realism of the artwork needs to demystify the dominant power, utilise forms of contemporary popular/mass culture and through technical innovation resist the 'normalising' tendencies of the mass media.'65 It demystifies through the stripping down of the location and through its palatable presentation (easier to digest than the hard hitting Realism of Courbet), Caillebotte's work was regularly well represented at Impressionist shows and lastly it utilises the form of popular culture to recognise the physical strength and potential of the proletariat.

Socialist Realism's impetus, as examined in Chapter 2, was contrived and complimentary to the higher powers, as it existed to serve and flatter the Stalinist regime. In 1932 the purging of artist's groups in Russia had begun, and alongside it the defamation of formalism and 'intuitism'. The state condoned style had been officially created with one rule: ‘to depict reality in its revolutionary development’66 however it was clear from the government’s castigation on modern styles that the proposition of there being only one rule was a fallacy. Younger artists avoided reprimand by adjusting their styles to fit the state condoned styles. Aleksandr Ivanovich Laktionov (b.1910 d.1972, Russia) was one such Soviet Painter.

Laktionov's oil painting Letter From The Front 1947 (Plate 2), is said to be one of the 'best-known, and best-loved images of the Soviet War experience’67 and as the article by Oliver Johnson in The Russian Review outlines, so beloved and believed to be so realist that it earned the artist a 'Stalin Prize' in 1948.

65 Brecht, B., Popularity and Realism, Frankfurt, 1967, in Adorno, T. W., et al., Aesthetics and Politics, Verso, 1980. p. 72.66 Elliott, D., Juszkiewicz. P., Socialist Realism, Grove Art Online, [Accessed 25/03/2015, Last Updated 02/10/2012]67 Johnson, O., "Premonition of Victory": "A Letter From The Front", Russian Review Vol. 68, No. 3 (Jul., 2009), pp. 408-428pg. 44

Aleksandr Laktionov, Letter From The Front, 1947, Oil on Canvas, 225cm x 155cm, Tretyakov Gallery, Image Courtesy of Bridgeman images.

pg. 45

Coincidentally, like the Caillebotte above, this painting was painted in the artist's home; Laktionov and his family had been moved to the small apartment built in the walls of a monastery for safety during the war. Laktionov recalled when he was struck by the inspiration for this piece 'I saw a soldier coming along the dusty road, limping, with one hand in a bandage and a letter in the other... I talked with him. He was just out of the hospital, where he had been with a comrade who had not written home for many years and was considered missing without a trace. Who had not received a letter from the front at that time?'68 Also linking the two artist's was their commendations for complimenting 19th century Realism, highlighted by the D. Elliott for the Grove Art Dictionary '...many younger artists, such as ... Aleksandr Laktionov... reverted to an academic style of genre painting based on the critical realism of the 19th century.'69

The painting's narrative structure is unabashed, and the nature of the story clear and easily relatable to the Russian proletariat. In terms of the Soviet 'regime of truth' this work is a powerful propagandist, war-romanticising tool. John Tagg writes extensively upon the power of representation and how we are presented with it examining here how representation and power structures are intertwined. Tagg’s writing reminds us to take prescribed imagery with a pinch of salt: 'What defines and creates 'truth' in any society is a system of more or less ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution and circulation of statements. Through these procedures 'truth' is bound in a circular relation to systems of power, which produce and sustain it, and to the effects of power which it induces and which, in turn, redirect it. It is this dialectical relation which constitutes what Foucault calls 'a regime of truth'70

The nature of this particular 'regime of truth', and Lukács support for works of such style, should be questioned. Letter From the Front was a sentimental naturalistic, narrative Soviet Realist piece painted two years after the end of the war, and it is lousy with perceived prosperity to come, signified by the greening of the leaves on the trees and the thawing of the grass in the courtyard. It is supremely tendentious, and was made at a time that apprehension of foreign modernist art was at a high. Lukács would say of this painting that it flatters the proletarian sensibilities, by affirming their lives, and thus their allegiance; 'In realism, the wealth of created life provides answers to the questions put by the readers themselves - life supplies the answers to the questions put by life itself!'71 Lukács had moved to the Soviet Union in 1929 after several arrests in relation to his links to the (then expelled) Hungarian Communist Party, of which he was a high ranking and influential member. It is a matter of contention amongst historians whether he truly

68 Laktionov, A. L., as quoted in Johnson, O., "Premonition of Victory": "A Letter From The Front", Russian Review Vol. 68, No. 3 (Jul., 2009), pp. 408-42869 Elliott, D., Juszkiewicz. P., Socialist Realism, Grove Art Online, [Accessed 25/03/2015, Last Updated 02/10/2012]70 Tagg, J., The Burden of Representation, 2nd ed, Palgrave Macmillan, 1988, p.172.71 Lukács, G., Tendency' or Partisanship?, 1932, in Harrison, C., and Wood, P. (eds), Art in theory: 1900-2000, Malden, Blackwell, 2003 p. 417.pg. 46

assimilated to Stalinism or whether it was for show, however publicly from 1930 through to the late 1950's he supported the regime, politically and aesthetically, calling into question if his support for this particular brand of Realism was true or coerced.

A Brechtian analysis would deem this work retrograde, it fails to question the established reality, and although the image would be relatable for a contemporary viewer its rosy demeanour and outdated 19th century styled presentation affirm the painting’s role as foremost propaganda. It is sentimental and comforting, failing to confront the question of what to do next in the post war Soviet Union.

Paul Wood provides clarity on the author's disparities which, as we come to our final subject of comparison, is important to consider: 'In essence Lukács conceived realism as a given form, one that was at odds with all varieties of Modernism... Only a 'true' realism, based on example of the great realists of the past, could penetrate the contradictions of modern capitalism... Brecht, though agreeing that realism was the key issue for modern art, and that Marxism provided the basis of an adequate approach to the problem, argued that it was not so much an achieved form as something that had to be won and re-won in new conditions.'72

The final work I will examine is a photomontage by John Heartfield (b.1891 d.1968, Germany) it differs in media, narrative and in the way it would be presented to an audience, as Plate 3 would be found on the cover of AIZ: the regular German leftist publication. Whoever Reads Bourgeois Newspapers Becomes Blind and Deaf... 1930, this work presents us with the head of a coal deliverer (as denoted by the straps around his chest which would be used to lug the load) a clearly working class figure blinded and faceless corrupted by bourgeois papers. Sabine Kriebel, photomontage specialist, notes that this is inclusive of any non-communist publication. She goes on to deconstruct the various messages in this image, illuminating her readers on the message that the subjects profession carried in Weimar visual culture 'In the hierarchy of urban labour, delivering coal to households was backbreaking, humble work...; that Heartfield should follow with this depiction on the heels of George Grosz and photographer August Sander, who both depicted coal carriers in 1929, suggests something about this urban labourer struck a chord in metropolitan class consciousness in the late Weimar Republic.'73 Proving that this symbolism was a tried, tested and importantly an understandable motif for the proletariat.

Lukács was not fond of photomontage's aesthetics, finding them harsh. However, in terms of his ideological standpoint (for example what a piece of work needs to convey in order to be successful this image fulfils his requirements, see page 32) outlining that the 72Kriebel, S. T., Revolutionary Beauty: The Radical Photomontages of John Heartfield, University of California Press, Berkeley and London, 2014, p..32473Ibid. p. 66. pg. 47

work should be about society as a whole, rather than about the individual. This image, while not directly engaging with an individual- achieved through the masking of the face, encapsulates the three major classes in one: the proletariat as the coal carrier, the bourgeois as the publications cabbaged over his face and the ruling classes as the parties spreading their messages through the bourgeois news. As Lukács stated: 'The literary practice of every true realist demonstrates the importance of the overall objective social context and the insistence on all round knowledge required to do it justice.'74 Heartfield has here created a work of a genuinely popular nature, in the media, which is democratised through the mode of print, allowing wide access to the image (which will be explored in Chapter 4) and through the motifs in the image, which are clearly understood.

74 Lukács, G., Realism in the Balance, Das Wort, 1938, in Adorno et al., Aesthetics and Politics, Verso, 1980, p. 33.pg. 48

John Heartfield, Whoever Reads Bourgeois Newspapers Becomes Blind and Deaf...,From AIZ 9 no. 6, 1930, Photomontage, Getty Images.

Text reads: I am a cabbage head. Do you know my leaves? From worries I am at my wit's end / But I keep quiet and hope for a saviour / I want to be a black - red - gold cabbage head! / I don't want to see and hear anything / or to interfere with public affairs. / And you can strip me right down to my shirt / But I'm not having any red press in my house!

pg. 49

Intriguingly the following quotes on the matter of popular culture from Lukács and Brecht respectively are tellingly nearly indistinguishable from each other:

'The Popular Front means a struggle for a genuine popular culture, a manifold relationship to every aspect of the life of one's own people as it has developed in its own individual way in the course of history. It means finding the guidelines and slogans which can emerge out of this life of the people and rouse progressive forces to new, politically effective activity.'75

'The criteria for popular art and realism must therefore be chosen both generously and carefully, and not drawn merely from existing realistic works and existing popular works, as often happens; by so doing, one would arrive at formalistic criteria, and at popular art and realism in form only...'In each case, one must compare the depiction of life in a work of art with the life itself that is being depicted, instead of comparing it with another depiction.'76

Both, it would appear, are primarily engaged with seeking a way to speak to the masses, that they may understand the social strata in a wider and more politically engaged manner. This engagement is not conclusively about the Communist Party, it primarily challenges the existing 'regime of truth'. The engagement equally is not just through the aesthetic realism, but through creating a work that qualifies and brings an accessible clarity to the realisms and truisms of the socio-political situation through mixed layer, multi media means.

As demonstrated this deconstruction can be applied to works traditionally outside of each of the authors interests, Brecht can politicise a Caillebotte in as much as Lukács can complement the socio-political content of a Heartfield despite his preference for painted realism. I would argue in lieu of the open discussion on whether Lukács was truly a convert to Socialist Realism or it was pressured, condones my reapplication of his methodology. As with the works of Lewis Hine discussed in chapter 1, the power of montage lies in the application of mixed media, word and image, amalgamated together to enrich the message, and develop the realism of the piece, each piece of qualifying information enriches the story that the artwork tells to the original contemporary audience about their lives, the world they live in and their power.

75 Lukács, G., Realism in the Balance, Das Wort, 1938, in Adorno et al., Aesthetics and Politics, Verso, 1980, p. 57.76 Brecht, B,. Popularity and Realism, Frankfurt, 1967, in Adorno, T. W., et al., Aesthetics and Politics, Verso, 1980, p. 85. pg. 50

‘Heartfield insisted that proletarian artists must

understand the immense propagandistic possibilities of

photography and begin to make conscious use of it. 'That is our task, to work

as well, strongly, and intensively as possible

upon the masses. Heartfield was determined

to use photographic images not to perpetuate

the myths of bourgeois society, but to unveil those

myths. Given his commitment to the Marxist

analysis of political and economic relationships,

Heartfield understood bourgeoisie photography

to be a cloaking or masking of those social

relations by which the bourgeois profited.’77 Beth

Irwin-Lewis, 1980.

77Irwin-Lewis, B., The Artist as Social Critic, University Gallery, University of Mnnesota Press, Minnaepolis, 1980, p. 35.pg. 51

Chapter 4Walter Benjamin, Fascism and Enlightening the Proletariat.

'The tiniest authentic fragment of everyday life tells more than painting does. Just like the bloody fingerprint of a murderer on a book page tells more than the text. A good deal of this revolutionary substance made its escape into photomontage. You need to consider only the works of John Heartfield, whose techniques turned the book cover into a political instrument' Walter Benjamin78

I will explore in this final chapter how Fascists took advantage of the access to a wider audience and how artists undermined the fascist visual power outlets, through a dialogue with Walter Benjamin's 1936 essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

Before the revolution of printing methods, access to high art remained the preserve of the upper classes. Reproductive printing techniques changed the way in which the public related to art, seen in the 19th century, with etchings of paintings printed in newspapers. This allowed a lower class audience to view works by both home and foreign artists. Etchings were an affordable way for people to bring art into their homes and many painters adapted their painting styles, for example by simplifying the composition and heightening the contrast, so that they could translate better in their reproductions.79 As printing also expanded art audiences, artists spoke for an expanding class remit.

78 Benjamin, quoted in Wood, P., Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism. Art Between the Wars, New Haven: Yale University Press, in association with the Open University, 1993. p 32879 A famous example of such practise is seen in Sir John Everett Millais The Order of Release 1746, painted in 1852.pg. 52

Benjamin’s concerns about art in its reproduced state manifested themselves in the notion of, and the loss of aura. Aura, a term coined by Benjamin, conceives of object-hood, intonating that an original work has a quality of authenticity unmatched in a reproduction. As Benjamin writes the original object collects its own history: ' Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence'80 The crucial idea within this essay is in regards to art and access, which is also where Benjamin’s Marxist theory is most meaningful in the context of celebrating and acclaiming photomontage. There are many ardent arguments against reproduction in his essay, but throughout the work Benjamin shines light on its potential: ‘In the first place, a technological reproduction is more autonomous, relative to the original, than one

Plate 1: Unknown Photographer, image published in Wilhelm Köhler’s The National Revolution in Germany, 1933, caption states: ‘Adolf Hitler. He wears an S.A. uniform without any signs of rank to display his close relationship with the simple S.A. man’, photo form the Calvin German Propaganda archive.

80 Benjamin, W., The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 1936, Penguin Books, London, 2008, p. 6pg. 53

Plate 2: Hugo Jaeger, Colour Photograph Professor Morrel, Wife Of Gauletier Forster And Hitler At Hitler’s Obersalzburg House, 1939,

Image courtesy of LIFE archives.

made by hand… Secondly, it can also place the copy of the original in situations beyond the reach of the original itself.’81

Weimar Germany was home to an ever-expanding aesthetic brand of politics, however thankfully this aesthetic expansion was not exclusive to right wing groups. Dada was the most prominent left wing artist group counteracting the visual presence of fascism. Like Brecht, Benjamin valued artistic progress, briefly discussing that it is right that art progresses in time and in relation to contemporary technological developments. He goes on to describe the Dadaists with homage to their defiance, ‘The commercial marketability of their works of art meant far less to the Dadaists than their non-marketability as objects of contemplative immersion.’ Benjamin follows ‘Dadaist demonstrations did indeed constitute a very violent diversion in that they placed the work of art at the centre of a scandal. That work had above all to meet one requirement: it must provoke public irritation.’82

In the context of photomontage the notion of autonomy, the viewing context of the art is an ingenious aspect of the visually and politically questioning Dadaist 81 Benjamin, W., The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 1936, Penguin, London, 2008, p. 682 Benjamin, W., The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 1936, Penguin , London, 2008, p. 31pg. 54

technique. For example, a photographic portrait of the fascist leader Hitler is the original artwork for a Nazi magazine such as Signal83. As the photo would have been taken for the purpose of reproduction in order to gain access to the masses the aura has not been corrupted: In his essay Benjamin absolves photographs of aura ‘from a photographic plate, many prints can be made: the question of the genuine print has no meaning…However, the instant the criterion of genuineness in art production failed, the entire social function of art underwent an upheaval…it came to be underpinned by another practice: politics.’84 The photograph exists within its own political ritual in the reproduced form in the media.

How does photomontage both undermine and fulfil Benjamin’s aims? If we return to our proposition regarding taking the Nazi publication as the primary object, in possession of its own aura and its own particular history we can understand the power photomontage held in its particular brand of artistic political deconstruction. As John Tagg on his essay on representation remarks: 'We must know more about power to discover where and how it touches photography. We must know more about the nature of resistance and struggle if we are to understand how photographic practice might be invested in them... Power in the West Foucault says, is what 'displays itself most and hides itself best'.'85 Photomontage, I would argue, was the art form that truly undermined the dominion that the Nazi's acquired in part to their clever use of photography and print.

83 Nazi wartime magazine Signal was a near folio sized publication with a circulation in up to 25 languages in huge print runs of up to 2,5000,000.84 Benjamin, W., The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 1936, Penguin, London, 2008, p. 1285 Tagg, J., The Burden of Representation, 2nd ed, Palgrave Macmillan, 1988, p. 67.pg. 55

Lewis Hine, photograph, "Our Baby Doffer" they called him. This is one of the machines he has been working at for some months at the Avondale Mills. Said, after hesitation, "I'm 12," and another small boy added, "He can't work unless he's twelve." Child labour regulations conspicuously posted in the

mill. Location: Birmingham, Alabama, November 1910

pg. 56

Plate 4: John Heartfield, German, N'ayez pas peur - il est végétarien/ Do not be afraid, he is vegetarian, 1936, photomontage, dimensions variable.

pg. 57

As mentioned earlier, we are not taking the original photograph as the subject of aura; instead we are taking the subject as the image when in reproduction such as the image seen in Plate 1 from the book The National Revolution in Germany, 1933. This image has from its very conception been created purposely to avoid bourgeois notions of art through its presentation and content. The similarity between the works of Lewis Hine's (b.1874 d.1940, American) Social Realism (Plate 3) is uncanny. The conjunction between the truth baring statement and text combination of Hine is seen mirrored in the presentation of Hitler in Plate 1. Here the National Socialists are employing pseudo humbling 'truths' in order to try and appeal to the proletariat. The words that give Hine's work power are here used to gain it.

Similarly when we explore Plate 2 we find more notions of the cult character infiltrating in Hugo Jaeger's (birth and death dates unknown, active 1936-1945, Germany) portrait of Hitler in a domestic setting. Images such as this were a relative new phenomenon, Roland Barthes reflected upon this ascendancy in Photography and Electoral Appeal: 'To start with, the effigy of a candidate establishes a personal link between him and the voters; the candidate does not only offer a programme for judgment, he suggests a physical climate, a set of daily choices expressed in a morphology, a way of dressing, a posture' Barthes continues ' Inasmuch as photography is an ellipse of language and a condensation of an 'ineffable' social whole, it constitutes an anti-intellectual weapon and tends to spirit away 'politics' to the advantage of a 'manner of being', a socio-moral status.'86 From his lowly ranked dress to his un-abrasive demonstration of his palatable domicile demeanour, the images are coerced into creating false security and trust. They try to present themselves as a reality.87

Photomontage unmasked this power in a provocative way, using the existing tools of power to undermine them. The left wing publication/work of montage is also particularly interesting because it utilises classic notions of appropriation by first mimicking and then developing, like a master and apprentice. Benjamin says of Fascism in relation to the proletariat that it '...sees its salvation in

86 Barthes, R., Photography and Electoral Appeal, Mythologies, Noon Day Press, New York, 1972, p. 9187 There is of course much to be said on misguided political notions, particularly for those assimilated in the lower ranks of the Nazi party or their voters, and their reasons for complying. Such as if they really believed that xenophobic, nihilistic causes were necessary/truthful. However as there is not sufficient room in this essay to examine the adverse effect of propaganda and brainwashing it is taken as read that the powers of the Nazi party and all of their photographers were strictly complicit in lying. pg. 58

allowing the masses to find their voice (not, of course, to receive their due).'88 Left wing photomontage seeks the same but offers the proletariat the chance to fight for their due and question the status quo. As is seen in Plate 4 in John Heartfield's 'Don't be Afraid, Hitler is a Vegetarian’ 1936, the genteel presentation of Hitler is mocked, through a visual language easily digested, the knowing and dastardly glow in his face as he sharpens the knife compliments the bloodstained overalls, the smiling minister eager and un concerned on the left while the Rooster in war bonnet stands prone. This work, as Benjamin explores, mediates the wishes of Brecht and Lukács in that through an understandable sequence of visual signifiers that illicit not just question, but a search for a truth 'The tasks that are at times of great historical upheaval the human perceptual apparatus is asked to perform are not simply solvable by visual means alone - that is to say, through contemplation. They are gradually mastered, on the instructions of tactile reception, by man’s gets used to them.' (Authors italics)89 This work, amongst many, asks its audiences to relinquish what they know of the fascist authority, in a way that is not linear or prescriptive, but seeks to advance the audience understanding through independent curiosity.

The aura of the photomontage is a transmutable experience relative to the audience itself and not lost through the method of reproduction. Benjamin says that the aura is 'there here and now of the work of art - its unique existence in the place where it is at this moment.'90 The aura becomes the reality- the here and now of the work, in whatever format. As the aura in this instance is the Social Realism, the exposure of corruption, bringing about the empowerment of the masses and their experience, manifest in a realisation, idealised in class action and revolution.

88 Benjamin, W., The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 1936, Penguin Books, London, 2008, p. 36.89 Benjamin, W., The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 1936, Penguin Books, London, 2008, p. 35. 90 Benjamin, W., The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 1936, Penguin Books, London, 2008, p. 5.pg. 59

Conclusion This study was created to explore the complicated socio-political and material complications in the search for a work of viable Social Realist credentials. In the studies' beginning I explored the notions of empiricism and through this investigation sought to discover if photography is theoretically capable of recording reality truthfully, but its physical format, if nothing else, often betrays the image in the end.

One of the really intriguing notions the short history of photography unearthed were the arguments between photographic practitioners. Reminiscent of Ruskinian arguments about Naturalism as opposed to constructed compositions, these complications perforated the history of this pioneering new medium which struggled to find its place. The question of photography’s purpose as a record came into question, with 19th and early 20th century photographers and artists trying to battle out over whether the medium should be used to create works of fact or works of art (and if it could exist as both).

Documentary Photography, particularly popular from 1910-1930, blurred lines further as it straddled the delicate line between art and reality. Documentary Photography as a record of life and object of aesthetic worth, was a subject of contention particularly for Brecht and Benjamin as they judged that the content of such images were too easily contrived. These photographs were seen as too shallow, as Paul Wood examined: ‘Brecht noted how an apparently objective photograph of the Krupp works would reveal little or nothing of its social relations. Benjamin observed in his essay 'The Author as Producer' how documentary photography ran the risk of turning even a rubbish heap or a decrepit tenement (let alone a factory) into an object of aesthetic contemplation. For both authors the solution lay in a shift - away from documentary's deceptive claim that it provided a single unmediated truth, and towards montage, towards the layering of one meaning over another, thus leading to the construction of a new meaning'91

Many art historians and philosophers have arrived at the same conclusion as I proposed initially regarding the particular power of photomontage. And as was discovered, in Weimar and Fascist Germany, George Grosz' drawings were 91 Wood, P., Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism. Art between the wars, New Haven: Yale University Press, in association with the Open University, 1993. p. 300.pg. 60

deemed too complicated, too satirical for the working classes resulting in him being ostracised by the KPD. Painting still largely remained the preserve of the upper classes and works in oil in both Germany and Russia served to epitomise rather than question the regime. Photography provided fodder for the young radicals in the various Dada factions to critique the political institutions. Photographic images, thanks to their use with simplistic propagandist meanings in mass media, held a resonance with the working classes, they recognised the characters, and Heartfield’s abrupt and brutal imagery had a clear cut message for the working classes.

With the benefit of hindsight we know that the workers revolution is yet to take place, and despite the criticism from these artists and attempts to reach out to the workers the Nazi party were too powerful and feared to be tackled effectively by Germany’s people. But we are left with the impressions made by these artists’ incisive contributions to culture. Leaving us with the question:

What legacy did photomontage leave?

Hans Haacke’s (b.1936, German) approach to art, in America and four decades later, holds parity with both some of the Dadaist aims and their approaches. His works of institutional and social critique were primarily informed by his disdain at the handling of the documenta show in Kassel, this is where Haacke was first dispirited by commercialisation of art recalling it as: ‘[the] loss of my innocence as a starry-eyed art student.’92 The show which had been organised in order to finally show degenerate art in the Soviet quarter and bring the isolated section of Germany ‘up to speed’ with the art world, what it was in fact was an exercise in money making: ‘Eventually, it began to dawn on me that documenta and, in fact, all exhibitions, by design or default, promote the ranking of artists and art movements as much as the prices for which their works are traded.’93 Haacke’s career continued in this fashion of dissatisfaction 92 Haacke, H., Lessons Learned, Landmark Exhibitions Issue, Tate Papers, Issue 12, 2009, p. 3.93 Ibid. p. 4.pg. 61

and question of the status quo through provocative and inquisitive artworks, such as montage Shapolsky et al. Real Estate Holdings, 1971 (Plate 1 & 2). This work montaged images of slum apartments alongside information about the landlords.

Plate 1 (previous page) and 2 (below) :Hans Haacke, Shapolsky et al. Real Estate Holdings, 1971, Gelatin silver print and printed and typed ink on paper, image

courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art Barcelona.

pg. 62

We see here the combination of image and text, and the power that they possess together, subtracting either would reduce from the totality and sadness of the image. The context is different, just as Lewis Hine’s impetus differed from John Heartfield's. Here Hans Haacke utilises public record and the lens to create a credible work of contention, a noble legacy from the works of the Dadaists.

Time, as it does, has moved on once more and making work in the spirit of the time in which the artist lives is a crucial aspect of the process. Technology has moved forward too and perhaps we see best, in its rawest and unrefined form, the ancestor of photomontage in public generated imagery rebelling against (most recently in Britain) the austerity measures of the Conservative Party.

Plates 3-5 left and below, generated by the public, courtesy of mydavidcameron.com

pg. 63

I conclude that it is of the upmost importance that the working classes take all media publications from powerhouses with the salt they are due, and that artists and workers alike should continue to question the status quo. These queries, as we have examined, can be large documents of doctrines and thoughts, but the marriage of text or the amendment of a press image and frequently a dash of humour can insight great curiosity and confidence for the class that is rarely given its due or given the decency of the truth.

Plate 6 John Heartfield, He'll gas the world with his words. After swearing to uphold the German Constitution, this man now

talks about peace. He'll respect peace as little as he respects his oath, 1933,

photomontage, AIZ cover, image courtesy of Bridgeman art.

pg. 64

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