My name is Alixe Bovey and I'm Head of
Research here and I'm also not sure
limit bear who you will have seen I
think on the programme as being the host
for this evening event. Unfortunately, she
 can't be here this evening so I've
stepped in. In what I described to
Dorothy Price as a benign ignorance
really. Because although I'm a huge
admirer of this special issue of the AAH
Journal, and I'm really delighted to be
hosting this event, I'm not a specialist
in Weimar or Germany at all. It's a
great thing though for us to be able to
celebrate the publication of a special
issue I think is as humanities scholars
as art historians we very frequently
celebrate the publication's of books but
of course one of the kind of critical
ways that academics communicate with one
another one of the faster ways that I
could have excommunicate with one
another is through through journals and
so often these don't get book reviews
and they don't have parties to launch
them into the world and I think
especially when a huge editorial effort
has gone into an issue like this one
which is intended to not just explore an
area of scholarship as it exists but
also to signal new directions that it
might take I think it's really wonderful
to be able to have the opportunity to
reflect on how this came into the world
and also on on our response to it as as
we read it for the first time so our
format for this evening is is part
conversation and part celebration and
the first hour or so will be the
conversation we are very lucky to have
with us the not just the the team who
edited this special issue but also
Dorothy Price who edited the special
issue and is also the editor of art
history Dorothy or dot as I will
probably reflexively call her is
professor of the history of art at the
University of Bristol and a master of a
number of fields but in her practice by
Marr Germany is really her primary one
is that a fair thing to say yeah
honors in the room so I'm gonna say
expressionist it was like Expressionism
as well Expressionism as well I'm also
delighted to introduce kamila smith
sitting next to dot and probably about
to wave in a friendly way or not I mean
it's your call if you're gonna wave in a
friendly way
who is Principal Lecturer no she's not
she's a lecturer in art history at the
University of Birmingham and also a
specialist in German modernism and Nina
Lebrun who joined us almost after just
as soon as I started speaking hello Nina
I'm Alex who's Principal Lecturer
for for the cambridge school of creative
industries at the university of east
anglia and who has contributed to this
issue and so each of them having been
introduced we'll have about ten minutes
to talk through different angles on on
the special issue that we have and then
what we'll do is retire for the party
component of of this evening which is
taking place upstairs in the in the
common room it's not it's taking
actually place in seminar room seven
which is along the hall but don't worry
will direct you to it and there will be
waiting for you Sam to be the managing
editor of art history has brought with
him 20 just 20 copies of the journal and
when you get to the reception you'll be
confronted with an almost existential
level crisis you go for the wine or do
you try to get one of the 20 free
coffees and I think there'll be some
security stuff to make sure that we
don't have an extinction rebellion type
scrum so that's the that's the the game
plan for this evening and who's going to
start is it going to be Camilla is going
to begin with with a few words about
about the issue thank you
let's join
thank you welcome everyone we've
delighted to be here thank you very much
for inviting us to celebrate the launch
of the special issue what's a very
important year for very ma I'm gonna say
a few words about what the special issue
hoped to achieve in its perspectives new
perspectives on Vemma and I'm gonna hand
over to dot to address the issue of what
especially she might do in relation to
art history as a journal and the
discipline or the field about my history
more generally the papers for this issue
then originated quite a while ago now
from a panel dot and I convened in 2015
the association of art historians at the
university of east anglia called bimal's
other visual culture in germany after
1918 the panel then used the notion of
author in quite a flexible way we
invited papers that were addressing
untold experiences of I'm a link to
rural communities provincial cities
parallel cities or urban minorities we
were also particularly interested in
movie attention perhaps away from more
dominant narratives or better no
narratives like avant-garde groups
Dada or the Bauhaus for example what was
really great about this panel as well as
it brought together quite diverse
scholars from German studies and our
history and curators and the fruits of
which then were published in our special
issue and I just like to take the moment
to on behalf of dot and I to thank those
contributors most of which cannot be
here tonight
apart from Nina and also to Sam BB from
art history for his tireless support of
the special issue and of course the
court hold for hosting us this evening
so a few emphases of this special issue
they're just my way of introducing it
and perhaps some of the images we see on
the screen in front of us a key focus
then for our issue was the shift from
the metal narratives of rhyme R to the
periphery the periphery on various
levels or the off-center this I think
you called it Nina in your essence
interesting expression so the periphery
on various levels be it geographical so
focus on the regions of send regional
centers of artistic production so we
have Cologne dressed and Hannover
Hamburg Bielefeld so showing the kind of
federal complexity of Germany or be it
through the underrepresented artists of
gala Forster or as a hen's and Dinkin or
marginalized subject matter so queer
identity or differently-abled
subjectivities and also finally thinking
about different media so this issue then
explores objects sometimes we think a
sidelined perhaps you know in art
history so bibliographic books the
contentious commodity of money Nord
guild and it so we read for enjoy
attention to the importance of money as
a material artifacts and not just sort
of known artists that contributed to the
production of money so called Hanson or
Cheska for example but also to the
perhaps unknown producers the printers
of money at the paper manufacturers in
these regional areas and also of course
the needs essay draws attention to
sculpture which you make the point that
it's often written out of our narratives
because it doesn't necessarily engage
with new technological innovations the
issue also then explores perhaps more
canonical methods like collage
associated often with progress
radicalism but from a different
perspective showing how in fact it can
also be associated at the rave sort of
basic level with the socio-economic
issues around replace my culture so as
that's called tour by looking fresh at
the work of kurt schwitters we just saw
on the screen some of the key underlying
aspects it a glance I suppose for me
certainly to some of the key underlying
issues that all the key vinyl narratives
that this issue deconstruction certainly
in terms of avant-garde or aesthetic
modernism is the issue around noise
actually code realism which is often
regarded as being perhaps by
conservative parochial politically
regressive Christine sure does sure does
an essay then opens up new meanings of
lawyers after kite with a fascinating
discussion I'm sure some of you read on
temporalities and we think things about
noise I think I was being very prescient
at a lot and how modern realism can be
in this period we also I think take the
narrative of the new woman to task she's
often considered as being childless
product to further the urban media and
Elinor Bevins essay then as a housing
thing cool very interesting Lee suggests
how the artist and the mother help hands
and thinkin on her sort of professional
way as an artist no motherly lifts for
above all else can therefore be used as
a useful construct to define creative
practice so the issue that the new woman
is a single figure without the kind of
is maternal is sort of playing a part in
Bevins essay at a final point then what
comes out to in some of these essays is
one ours very own self referential
historicize ation and it's complex
dealing with time whether it's through
straightforward the celebration of
historical narratives on not geld or
through looking which nor cared a very
important point kind of looking
historically at sort of a unifying idea
of german Clute or or whether it's
through narratives looking back at
figures from the enlightenment through
erotic work all the more complex
engagement with the vendor mininum
dialectical concept of history through
latter Stein's work all the excitement
for the possibilities of awakening an
art of the future together these essays
then suggests that vimar germany is
profoundly aware of its always own
history and also being part of a moment
in time and I think these artists ought
to engage with this in very different
ways
these essays and we deliberately moved
away from in our original panel we have
a sort of title are after 1980 and we
can talk more about this I guess but
we've originally moved away from having
a definitive kind of period of Lima in
our title and special issue to try and
suggest some of the complexities of the
period and get away from via Mars that
kind of finite period which I think
these essays all do very nicely by
looking to buy Mars prehistory and
looking perhaps to the future post 1933
so perhaps issues of history and time
can be discussed later anyway I'm gonna
hand over to doc hopefully thank you
that introduction and again I'd like to
extend my thanks also to the court or
Research Forum but also to the
association for art history and
particularly to Sam baby for his
patience during the production of the
special issue which isn't the first
special issue of art history that I have
shepherded and been closely involved
with in my tenure as editor of the
journal at large so it was a
particularly special issue for me to
sort of work with Camilla and all our
contributors on because it in a sense
it's a sort of act to me I've worked in
this period for about 30 years and my
PhD was on my my culture my first book
was on by my culture my second book was
on vimar aspects of my MA
so it's a topic very close to my heart
but actually what this gave me the
opportunity to do was to really think
with Camilla and our contributors as to
what is special about via offer art
history and also art history as a
discipline why we why the journal art
history should be publishing on vimar in
such a we know is quite a narrowly
defined concept and period of study for
a journal it's quite a sort of lens in
focus on a particular moment in the
journal the special issue program for
the
Journal have published specialist issues
like this before on Naples and on other
kinds of geographical and historical
periods but it also has a kind of one of
the tendencies of the special issue
program is to to take a somatic approach
and a broader lens over a sort of a long
view on a particular theme so this was
at this is a bit of a departure in in
some ways and that also I thought it was
quite timely and important obviously
Verma has been in the news a lot with
political parallels and obviously you
know there were any number of articles
in popular on popular sites in the kind
of lead-up to Trump's election while all
of this was going on while we had our
special issue and affectionate age and
then working on the special issue so
there was this kind of time levy Ammar
moment as well there in terms of the
political parallels the swings to the
right and the kind of culture of
resistance that comes with a swing to
the right as well and also issues to do
with critical race which is particularly
was particularly kind of seem very
pertinent to think about the parallels
between vemma era in germany and the
parallels with our own era in terms of
you know black lives matter and all of
those kanpei's and it seems very
opposite in Black History Month that
we're talking about this now as well and
so that's those are some of the concerns
that I wanted to bring into the
introduction they're not necessarily the
concerns that we the individual
contributors think about but in thinking
about why we should have this particular
issue in art history I wanted to sort of
draw on those kind of political
parallels the political imperatives of
Vimal as an era but also thinking about
the discipline and the origins of our
discipline as art historians
modern art history if you like and so
particularly the the hanboks school
which we go into in some detail in our
introduction I'm not expecting everyone
to have read the introduction yet but
hopefully you will after today but with
this focus on others and via mass others
and this notion of other national
charity I was really interested to sort
of look at the scholarship around
Varberg
and the fact that you know the handbook
school or sort of the origins of all
kind of contemporary discipline happen
in handbook there happened in this
regional city in her in in Germany
exactly coincidental with the
establishment of the Weimar Republic
so our discipline is absolutely tied to
the origins if I'm of Republic in the
same way that the Bauhaus is as well so
there are certain kind of key moments
that are implicated in this political
situation after the first world war in
Germany and it seemed really interesting
that Hamburg after the first world war
which was a city of exile zit was a port
city it had a sort of it very dominant
role in the Hanseatic League and it was
a sort of Merchant City and the VAR book
family financed obviously through their
personal wealth decided that actually to
get away from this idea that handbook is
just a trade City and also to kind of
established this idea of build or more
culture within Germany in with in
Hamburg within the city and founded the
university so it was a viable family
who've actually founded University of
Hamburg and therefore with the donation
of our books library at that point to
the University and the appointment of
Antikythera as the first professor of
philosophy in Hamburg in 1919 and he
became rector later and we are as a
discipline very embedded
in this period and sort of very in front
we sort of yeah we were yeah collections
are very close so it's interested in
that and then and in the fact that it's
this there's this kind of flowering of
Jewish culture during this period
through the fire books and through other
centers as well across Germany and it's
the first time that the Jewish families
can get some kind of recognition so the
Democratic Republic after 1918 opened up
all sorts of possibilities it also it
also closed a lot down and there were
there was a constant tension throughout
the period from 1918 1919 to 1933
between the radical left and the far
right and they were always in tussle and
that's that kind of innocence that sort
of dialectical tussle between far left
or far right is really what animates the
culture of the period under
investigation and so what we're also
interested in doing was thinking about
what are the overlooked aspects of Vimal
culture so there's a sort of dominant
narrative around via our histories
particularly relating to art that
feature growths indexed as the kind of
protagonists in terms of their sort of
social engagement and their radical
critique of the of the Republic but
there are also many more opportunities
for women artists working in the field
women photographers as well and the kind
of histories and narratives of these
women artists are slowly being recovered
and so we wanted to sort of give space
to that in the journal as well but the
other interesting kind of point from for
me as the editor of art history when I
took on the editorship of the journal I
came with a particular vision I was kind
of given the role in competition through
the vision that I articulated which was
to do with starting to attend to issues
to do with how art history as a
discipline needs to kind of open up its
own borders and I love the way the VAR
book is always thinking about kind of
the limits of art history and pushing
the borders and thinking about how we
can attend to the discipline and kind of
in terms of critical race and critical
race studies and what was always kind of
troubling to me as a as a historian of
Lima culture was that while I have dealt
with kind of certain kind of canonical
aspects of Dada of if I'm a culture like
Dada
there was this body for the last two or
three decades this body of research on
black Germany historical research on
black Germany and I was and I really
wanted to turn my attention to thinking
about well what does this body of
research on black Germany how can what
what how does it alter the narratives of
art history you know even though there
hasn't been much art historical research
and that's partly to do with sort of
lack of empirical data about lives of
black Germans and professions of black
germs as well and I tried to do some of
this data and I spoke to various X
that's about the kinds of professions
that migrants from Namibia Germany's
former colony in particular the kinds of
professions they engaged with within
Germany when they were there in the
twenties and the interesting thing about
black Germany is that the kind of the
migrant populations in Germany haven't
come through the same routes as they
have in within the transatlantic slave
economy it's through colonialism yes
and through Germany's former colonies
and colonized peoples from Namibia
coming over to Germany and then finding
themselves in limbo when Germany loses
all its colonies when it loses the first
world war and so you have these
stateless people like I'm not going to
call the citizens because I couldn't get
citizenship and so there's a kind of
whole subculture that arises that really
hasn't been attended to and and there's
a kind of sort of return of the
repressed within within the visual
culture of the period where you have you
know I go Sanders very striking
photographs of circus work
you have this amazing painting by ants
noise she loved that mother and her
family and and Christian Chad's the
front cover of our especially she as
well so I was really interested in
attending to that quite closely as well
which chimes more widely with my
editorial vision about decolonizing art
history and rethinking the boundaries
and the centers and and and what it is
that we should be doing as art
historians as we go forward and I'm
probably aware of I had my 10 minutes
okay well what I what I think I'll do is
actually okay know what I think I'll do
it is actually segue into introducing
Nina to talk a little bit more about the
case study so one of the other
interesting things about this particular
issue from our point of view was the
fact that Nina chose to focus on women
sculptors in Germany and the research on
women sculptors in in Vemma Germany is
is in it's certainly in English and
actually in Germany too I mean you know
more about this has been very very
sporadic to say the least and there are
particularity there are particular
reasons I think around the neglect of
women are sculptors in Germany in this
period so I'm going to hand over to Nina
who has a brilliant case study on here
about particular sculptor Spring Gala
Forster so Thank You Nina
thank you so much dot and thank you both
for editing and convening the panel on
which this issue originally arrested the
introduction that you both wrote is the
best thing I've ever read on visual
culture in the vemma republic and after
it's come back from the German Studies
conference in the United States and
annual conference for of German studies
people mostly historian some artists
draw in some film historians some
literature people and now heard nothing
as groundbreaking as this people are
still grappling and struggling with how
to interpret visual culture of vemma and
as I discovered historians especially
grappling with the year 1933 looking at
vemma from the perspective of what came
afterwards and so I really welcome this
opportunity to say a few words here I
mean my focus is sort of a bit narrow
because I'm looking at women sculptors
but on the other hand I'm also looking
at women artists and as you said that it
also looking at these groups that have
so far been marginalized or practices
that have been marginalized in the
history of vemma visual culture opens up
questions about how we do art history to
begin with so I first want to ask just
talk about the challenges of researching
women artists that is partly a general
challenge which has to do with
recovering an archive that has either
been lost or never been opened and then
there's also a distinctive challenge in
in researching artists in the vemma
republic but the latter the researching
artists in the very public is almost not
a challenge of the 1920s but a challenge
of post 1945 historiography because it's
not here it really is a matter of
recovering artists who were very well
known in their time and who were written
about in their time so you need to go to
the archives go to published sources and
it's all there
and then after and it's even it's even
when I if I just look at my sort of
group of women sculptors the history
even continues they even continue to be
present in the archive beyond 1933 so
that also links to this point about what
do the dates mean what is 1914 what is
1918
what is 1919 1918 was the Declaration of
the Republic by two different people
1919 was the drafting and the
ratification of the Constitution of the
vemma Republic and 1918 1919 was also a
year of revolution and then what is 1933
then we have another break but in terms
of artist practice often if you didn't
know there was a 1933 you couldn't tell
it in the aesthetic practice so all
along the challenge is also how to link
the politics to the aesthetics because
you cannot look at this period without
considering the politics but that means
you're losing also a bit of the you're
losing the aesthetic bit of being an art
historian as opposed to a political
historian so the for example with the
women sculptors they continued to
practice after 33 unless they were of
groups that were forbidden to work in by
the fascists and ultimately murdered
others continued to work across the
1930s we divide people were still
writing about them they were still
exhibiting but then in 1945 things
stopped and then you really have a
complete blankness of literature until
the women's movement in the nineteen
seventy started discovering artists
again so bit by bit artists were
discovered and in a recent book by Julie
Johnson called a memory factory she
writes about the turn of the century
around 1900 in Vienna she points out
that the women artists there they put on
an exhibition before the First World War
of women artists of all in all ages and
all countries and it took them a few
weeks to put together this exhibition
and she contrast this with the first
women artists exhibition put on in the
United States and 1970s after the Second
World War which took years of research
and so there's a knowledge that people
at the time had and that artists could
also drawn that was subsequently lost
and when our having to recover if I read
articles written by women critics in the
1920s they automatically know there's
Artemisia Gentileschi there's Lavinia
Fontana they draw on a whole host of
predecessors whom they could see
themselves heir to from the Renaissance
onwards in nineteen the year 1927 saw
the first saw the foundation of the
Polar Beckham or Azure Museum she was a
German painter who died in 1907 and
subsequently was one of the most famous
painters in Germany in the 20s and this
museum that was founded in 1926 in her
hometown of Bremen is the first museum
dedicated to a woman artist in the world
and shortly there are or just before in
1926 an association called gear dock was
founded one of many women's association
and this was an association of all the
women artists societies across Germany
and in 1933 they had 7,000 members this
is quantity but the joy in looking at
the Vermonters is that you've got a huge
choice and you have activity in the
period as well looking and being aware
of these you know of women's new role
and women's new political and social
role in the inner republic in terms of
the women sculptors just to look at my
specific very sort of small group others
to take one examples both both the
sculptures here I discuss so one is gala
force and one is Emil Oda and
contemporary critics 1919 1920 1921 male
critics wrote about these sculptures as
exemplifying humanity and the examples
they use are sculptures of female nudes
but each of these sculptors and I find
it extraordinary that they talk that
they use a female nude as representing
humanity in general
and in German this is even more
interesting because her different
articles there's dear Mensch which is
coded or the article is gendered
masculine but it's applied to these
pregnant sculptures and I'm looking
through the writings thinking there's
got to be some bias somewhere sooner or
later they'll come out with some
dismissive comments about women artists
but I did I can't find them they're not
coming out with them so this is um this
this sort of struck me then later on as
the 20s go on things shift a bit and
then there's the to some notorious 1928
book by an art historian called hands
hit upon a male artist Dorian who was
married to a painter Lily Hildebrand
painter and graphic artist and feminist
artist and since the 1970s have
criticized this book heavily for being
belittling of women and saying they're
good for decorative arts they're not
good as spatial things but they can do
small small sculpture graphic arts
pretty pictures not architecture but in
the end I bought this book and what you
have initially is you have hundreds of
pictures of lavish illustrations of
women artists through the ages and this
is how it was reviewed as well that
there was just it was like a coffee
table book so comparing this to post
1945 where there's nothing I thought I'm
willing to put up with the bit of
dismissiveness because at least here is
an archive and here is someone taking
these artists seriously and publishing
them and certainly critics at the time
and I went read quite a few reviews were
critical of this as well so it's not as
available understands for a general
attitude but people who were saying well
why is he you know what you know they
were critical of him being like that
finally um
because also an issue like this doesn't
only synthesize research but also
stimulates new research so it was
already in the wake of the panel and
then I started to when I was looking at
my women sculptors I noticed that there
were quite a few sculptures of black
women and black men by the women
sculptors about which about which
sculptors nothing is written I was
trying to look for artists of African
heritage or of any there were also
sculptures of Indonesian dancers
Javanese dancers interestingly but I
couldn't find any practitioners so I
sort of put this aside though this is
interesting what to do and I think an
issue like this and sort of just opening
out the discipline also kind of
validates my interest again and I hope
validates everyone's interest in little
things that seem by the wayside and in
digging further and pulling that out and
making something that has hitherto be
marginal into something more central
thank you do you would you like to speak
to one another to begin with do you have
any questions or comments for each other
yeah I guess I've got questions for Nina
which is to do with how you decided and
initially to focus on gala Forester when
and if I understand it right there's not
that many of her actual works from the
key works that are no longer in
existence so you'll work with
photographs of what's left
so what particulars my question is you
know what are the challenges of that in
1984 I was a student in Heidelberg and
there was an exhibition in Germany that
had traveled from Los Angeles which was
called German expressionist sculpture
and that was the first exhibition in in
certainly in the english-speaking world
of the sculpture of this time so I went
to this exhibition gave a paper and gave
a student paper on gala Foster whose
works were exhibited but not her works
but her photographs because none of the
work survives that all I hope that in
some garden buried but they're gone so
it's basically doing and in fact in
terms of sculpture at least a third if
not half of the works were lost or I'll
do two
bombing in the Second World War and due
to disruption by the National Socialists
so the archive is very decimated so it's
often we're doing and it's a history of
photography as much as a history of
sculpture he is later I was
procrastinating from some other research
I was doing looking through my former
student papers then I thought well gala
Foster what's been research on her since
nothing and I thought well I've got to
do it so that caught me in because I
really I was very struck by the by the
sculptures these five sculptures that
were exhibited in 1919 and that garnered
such amazing critical acclaim and have
since well they've forgotten but now
they're sort of being slowly discovered
again so it is a challenge it is it I
mean often we art historians cheat
anyway and we look at pictures and then
we hope to you know it goes through a
gallery and travel and we have have to
see many things in a very short time but
with these works there is no there are
no that's all we have the photos which
poses are really interesting problem for
feminist art histories isn't it I think
in terms of you know then reinserting
and recovering different kinds of
narratives and art historical narratives
where you don't have the object but you
know that they existed and it's it's
it's one of the kind of perennial I
think problems with historical recovery
of and and not just recovery but also
challenge to the discipline as it's
formed as well it's really interesting
how women artists in the vomer Republic
have become with people like lot allows
us Joan and Jean Mammon there's been a
sort of flowering of new interest
actually and in changing the narratives
and sort of challenging the narratives
of the sort of Dix gross access event I
think but I think that's also right the
interest in Illustrated newspapers and a
lot of these women weren't as kind of
keep it all so Africa so they worked as
illustrators fashion illustrators in the
press
seems to have been a real interesting
thing for the last for 10-15 years and
looking at different different types of
artworks I suppose yeah mmm indeed and
should we throw it open to the floor
