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after the chaos and horrific destruction of World War i, a powerful desire for regenerative order and classical beauty emerged in Europe. artists turned away from experimentalism toward a heroic embrace of the human figure, objective values, and rational organization. Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy, and Germany, 1918–1936 examines this inter-war aesthetic in its key manifestations: the poetic dream of antiquity in the Parisian avant-garde; the politicized re-vival of the Roman Empire under Benito mussolini; the functionalist utopianism of international style architecture; and chillingly, the contrived biological clas-sicism, or aryanism, of nascent nazi society. Chaos and Classicism is orga-nized around a series of themes that illuminate the dominant concerns and subliminal drives of European art and thought in this highly charged period.

antonio donghi, Circus (Circo equestre), 1927. oil on canvas, 150 x 100 cm. Gerolamo and Roberta Etro, milan

aRt in FRanCE, italy, and GERmany, 1918–1936

this exhibition is supported in part by grants from the national Endowment for the arts and the david BergFoundation.

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architect and designer Gio Ponti, furni-ture designer Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann, and fashion designer madeleine Vionnet created innovative work in the new clas-sicizing mode. The Constructors. in the wake of the destruction of World War i, metaphors of construction and reconstruction became ubiquitous. the new modernist classi-cism of le Corbusier, ludwig mies van der Rohe, and Giuseppe terragni sought a resolution of architectural history’s past and the industrial present. Platonic ideas of geometric harmony and the beauty of new materials (glass and metal especially) were brought together in unprecedented combinations. Classicizing the Everyday. not all classi-cizing art was based on ancient precedent. interwar artists and critics understood the steadfastness of ordinary things, reliably unchanging, as a form of classic expres-sion. Pictures of individuals, on the one hand—traditional painted portraits and self-portraits by Picasso, Fridel dethleffs-Edelmann, dix, Carl hofer, Giorgio morandi, and luigi trifoglio—and the typological photographic portraits of august sander, on the other hand, were both assertions of classic fixity amidst the flux of modern life. Performance/Anxiety. the performing body became a key element of modern spectacle between the wars. developed, remade, and “perfected,” the body was the new measure of objective value, in contradistinction to the mind, now consid-ered too abstract and subjective. artists as stylistically and politically diverse as

Willi Baumeister, Franco Gentilini, Erich heckel, albert Janesch, and lorenzo lorenzetti invoked the theme of sport in their work of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Circus, carnival, and commedia dell’arte imagery was treated by an equally diverse group, including andré derain, antonio donghi, Juan Gris, heinrich hoerle, and Gino severini. The Dark Side of Classicism. interwar classicism was gradually appropri-ated by the political right. among the most notorious modern portrayals of antique Rome were paintings of gladi-ators by de Chirico, attacked by the surrealists for artistic collusion with the Fascist regime. “Each politically histori-cal epoch searches in its art for the link with a period of equally heroic past,” adolph hitler asserted shortly after seiz-ing power in 1933, “Greeks and Romans suddenly stand close to teutons.” the 1936 olympic Games in Berlin were an orgy of classicizing spectacle, re-corded and refashioned by the great-est nazi propagandist, filmmaker leni Riefensthal, in her Olympia (1936–38).

— Kenneth E. silver, Guest Curator

Visit Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy, and Germany, 1918–1936 online at guggenheim.org/chaos.

catalogue available

Frenchman aristide maillol, and italian arturo martini. this fascination with the whole and intact body lent itself to po-liticized idealizations in the work of hans Belling, marcel Gromaire, and Fernand léger on the left, and to the Fascist italian art of massimo Campigli, Guido Galletti, and Ubaldo oppi on the right. Crazy for Classicism. Greek and Roman history and myth, which had long provid-ed the West with a shared narrative and archetypal subjects, revived again be-tween the wars. this vast transformation of contemporary European culture en-compassed not only painting and sculp-ture, but also photography, film, fashion, and the decorative arts. Practitioners as diverse as poet-and-filmmaker Jean Cocteau, photographer Florence henri,

The Avant-Garde Looks Backward.the years following World War i were marked by a striking modernist re- embrace of traditional aesthetics: a retour à l’ordre (return to order) in France, a ritorno al mestiere (return to craft) in italy, and a neue sachlichkeit (new objectivity) in Germany. Pablo Picasso was the leader of this new historicism, which profoundly altered the art of Julius Bissier, Georges Braque, Carlo Carrà, Giorgio de Chirico, otto dix, and henri matisse. Classical Bodies, New Humanity. the postwar search for a reassuring artistic language from the past led logically to the classical medium of sculpture. the idealized human form was reconceived by an international group of major sculp-tors, including German Georg Kolbe,

Chaos and ClassiCism

tourscurator’s eye dec 3, 2 pm Kenneth E. silvernov 12, 2 pm helen hsu

heinrich hoerle, Masks (Masken), 1929. oil on canvas, 68.5 x 95.5 cm. museum ludwig, Cologne, haubrich donation, 1946