The German Army Over for Tea
Von Werner's In The Troops Quarters Outside Paris, 1894. Full painting is at the Google Art Project. 'm posting this one because of its virtuosity and because it gives a nice introduction to art interpretation. A brilliant painting, it is also a hyper-patriotic celebration of 19th century German militarism and nationalism, which, as we know, lead to very bad things.
From the cheerful mother, you would think that being invaded was like having the German Army over for tea. The daughter, interestingly, has something of a mask of fear.
It was this sort of emergent hyper-patriotism that got Nietzche into something of a tizzy. And for good reason.
posted by JAB at 9:56 AM
13 Comments:
Thanks for sharing this painting, it is quite impressive. I have a number of questions about your interpretation.
From what I can tell, the painting depicts a scene from the siege of Paris in the winter of 1870-71 during the Franco-Prussian war, which led to German unification, 23 years before the work was finished.
1) You say that the painting is a "celebration of 19th century German militarism." Most paintings that celebrate militarism I've seen depict soldiers in battle, not revelry. Why is this painting an exception?
2) You use the term "hyper-patriotism." What is the difference between "hyper-patriotism" and "patriotism?"
3) You refer to the woman in the painting as the "mother." She from her dress and the decoration of the house, she appears to be a serving woman. Is there reason to believe she is the woman of the house?
4) I'm not a fan of militarism, but I don't think it's fair to imply that German militarism necessarily leads to Nazism, though that's how it played out in history. In the scenario depicted, German militarism led to unification, which in and of itself was not a bad thing.
Fucking hell. I just wrote 15 paragraphs in response. All lost.
Basically:
1) Many scenes like this: the scholarly take on this one is apparently: stuffed rich with anti-French symbolism in the occupation the the room and it's decor, and a odd hiding of the implicit violence of war in the occupation of a civilian house. Not just showing soldiers at rest, it's asserting military values as apex values through particulars of detail and mood above all others, especially French civilian values. It's peculiar in this over-the top rosy view compared to say many American paintings of soliders, which tend to depict hardship in glory, and are much more sensitive to suffering.
http://www.history.army.mil/html/artphoto/sel_artists.html
You will of course find a thousand exception to this if you look. I think the generalization holds. Even Normal Rockwell has a tenderness depicting the environment of real war utterly missing here.
2) An excess of patriotism to the exclusion of other important national and social values.
3) Yes, it's Mom, from previous research.
4) Sure, militarism anywhere. But this work hangs in Berlin. 50,000 civilians died in the siege of Paris, and many afterward, many at the hands of singing, tea-drinking, oddly furniture-respecting Germans ( a special note of one of the critics). Only the girl shows any signs of distress.
This is one of those paintings, remarkably rich, that you can easily write a book about.
By "An odd hiding of the implicit violence of war in the occupation of a civilian house," do you mean, "Hiding the violence of war by not depicting it?"
FYI: when I pasted "Von Werner's In The Troops Quarters Outside Paris" into the search field on Wikipedia, the first article to appear in the search results was Adolph Hitler(!)
I thought the mud on the boots was a nice touch, and technically very well done...
Ah, here we go:
"Von Werner's In The Troops Quarters Outside Paris was Hitler's favorite painting. Under heavy guard by hand-picked SS troopers, the painting accompanied the Fuhrer everywhere he went during the war."
Not the lack of depiction of war... Even Norman Rockwell's WWII images (distinguishing here from poster images) have a much stronger sense of the tragedy of war in very indirect or even comic images. This is tone, subject matter, color, decor, composition and detail: war as a literally a parlour game. Imagine the same idea, the same execution, and different uniforms in say, Saigon, 1965. Or say Sarajevo or Kinshasa in the 1990s. Or for that matter, Paris in 1940.
The dissonance between acute observation of the detail of soliders and an occupied house and the layered war-glorifying metaphors is what is so strange about this painting (painted, interestingly, 25 years afterwards).
John Singer Sargent's Gassed is a work by a master every bit as technically skilled - superior indeed at parlour scenes.
http://tinyurl.com/6bx4qbo
More to the point however, look for paintings depicting soldiers interacting with civilians.
One of the greatest for modern sensibilities, mostly for formal reasons, is Vermeer's Officer and Girl Laughing, at the frickin' Frick. One of the essays on this page gets to the point: guardroom scenes, a popular genre in 17th century Holland, turns over decades from "less than heroic" soldiers squabbling over booty, etc, into gentlemen officers portrayed in "delicate social interaction with attractive, well-to-do,women."
http://tinyurl.com/3h4xn2y
By the end of WWI, this treatment of the subject not just seems but seemed to many artists, German especially absurd. Afterwards, it seemed to many German artists, Otto Dix comes to mind, and indeed arguable was- extremely dangerous.
The post-war revolution in art was aimed very much at this kind of painting, to the extent that illusionistic representation itself became a political target, confirmed, it seemed (and here we go round again,) by things as diverse as Sargent's late in life turn away from (if stunning) parlor painting and the Nazis' Degenerate Art Show, and it should be added, Stalin's repression of the very abstractionists that had bolstered the Bolsheviks.
Lastly, compare and contrast: search Leon Golub.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Nevinson...
Hey, check out this website:
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/home.cfm
It has a pretty good entry on that painting, too:
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=1400
I hate German Nazis...
I hate to bring it up but... I think we're all Germans here.
Not me, I'm Schwabish...
This picture reminded me of a bit of Shakespeare, from Richard III:
Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls
Conscience is but a word that cowards use,
Devised at first to keep the strong in awe
Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law.
March on, join bravely, let us to't pell-mell;
If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell
Post a Comment
<< Home