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POLITICAL EXTREMISM

Date:
Wed 04.01.2023 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Location:
Neue Nationalgalerie
Offer:
Talk | Lecture / Adults

Lecture by Volker Weiß: The „Other“ Avant-Garde: Heroic Realism and Objectivity in the Modernization of a Political Right

Historian Volker Weiß conducts research on the history and present of the extreme right in Germany. In his lecture, he will address the aesthetics of a „heroic modernism“. The new perceptions on the technically permeated world, which broke through in the course of modernization, had their counterpart in aesthetics. Reduction of form and analytical fragmentation, however, were by no means only the hallmarks of progressive movements. The anti-rational vitalist revolt of the political right also saw itself carried away by progress and drew its own consequences. Even the first presentation of Futurism in the gallery „Der Sturm“ was not only met with rejection there; rather, it was recognized what tremendous dynamics the new forces could unleash in the service of the nation. The desire for formal „objectivity“ could be vaulted with modernized myths, the broken reassembled. Focusing on this „other avant-garde“, the lecture illuminates a blind spot in the reception of classical modernism. One point of reference is the artist Rudolf Schlichter, whose „Portrait of Géza von Cziffra“ is represented in the exhibition. Schlichter initially belonged to the left wing of the New Objectivity, but abandoned his communist convictions at the end of the 1920s and turned to nationalism.

 

The events will take place as part of a lecture series from September 2022 to June 2023, on the first Wednesday of each month at 7 pm. Unless otherwise noted, the events will be held in German.
Afterwards, the exhibition can be visited until 10 pm.

Participation in the lecture and admission to the exhibition are free of charge. 
Online booking required.


The event series is made possible by the Ferdinand-Möller-Stiftung, Berlin.