Jeanne Mammen: Art Between Resistance and Conformity in Modern Germany, 1916-1950

by Camilla Smith, Deborah Ascher Barnstone (Editor), Thomas O. Haakenson (Editor)

Overview

Jeanne Mammen's watercolour images of the gender-bending 'new woman' and her candid portrayals of Berlin's thriving nightlife appeared in some of the most influential magazines of the Weimar Republic and are still considered characteristic of much of the 'glitter' of that era. This book charts how, once the Nazis came into power, Mammen instead created 'degenerate' paintings and collages, translated prohibited French literature and sculpted in clay and plaster-all while hidden away in her tiny studio apartment in the heart of Berlin's fashionable west end.

What was it like as a woman artist to produce modern art in Nazi Germany? Can artworks that were never exhibited in public still make valid claims to protest? Camilla Smith examines a wide range of Mammen's dissenting artworks, ranging from those created in solitude during inner emigration to her collaboration with artist cabarets after the Second World War. Smith's engaging analysis compares Mammen's popular Weimar work to her artistic activities under the radar after 1933, in order to fundamentally rethink the moral complexities of inner emigration and its visual culture.

The examination of Mammen's life and work demonstrates the crucial role women artists played as both markers and agents of German modernity, but the double marginalisation they have nonetheless encountered as inner émigrés in recent history. It will be of interest to students of German studies, art history, literature, history, gender studies and cultural studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350239388
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	11/17/2022
Series:	Visual Cultures and German Contexts
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.50(h) x 0.95(d)

About the Author

Camilla Smith is Associate Professor in Art History in the Department of Art History, Curating and Visual Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK, where she specialises in modern art, architecture and design in Germany and Austria. Her research into aspects of German modernism is published in leading journals such as New German Critique, Oxford Art Journal and Art History, and she has contributed to international exhibitions held in London, Berlin and Vienna. In 2019, to celebrate the centenary of the Weimar Republic, she co-edited a special issue of Art History with Dorothy Price, and explored Jeanne Mammen's watercolours for BBC Radio 3's 'The Essay'. She is currently working on a book-length project on German erotica in the early twentieth century.

Deborah Ascher Barnstone is Professor and Head of Architecture at the University of Sydney, Australia. Barnstone is a licensed architect in Germany, holds a Master of Architecture degree from Columbia University, and holds a PhD from TU Delft. Her recent monograph works include Beyond the Bauhaus: Cultural Modernity in Breslau, 1918-1933 (2016), Art and Resistance in Germany (2018), and The Break with the Past: Avant-garde Architecture in Germany, 1910-1925 (2019). She co-edits Bloomsbury's Visual Cultures and German Contexts book series.

Thomas O. Haakenson is Associate Professor in Critical Studies and Visual Studies at California College of the Arts in San Francisco and Oakland, USA. He is coeditor of the book series Visual Cultures and German Contexts and has been published widely, including in New German Critique, Cabinet, Rutgers Art Review, German Studies Review, and the anthologies Legacies of Modernism, Spectacle, Representations of German Identity, as well as Memorialization in Germany Since 1945. He has received awards and fellowships from the United States Fulbright Program, the Social Science Research Council, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, and the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction

Chapter 1: Forging a Career

Chapter 2: Berlin 1947 – Going Solo

Chapter 3: National Socialism and Private Dissent

Chapter 4: Propaganda, War and the Home Front

Chapter 5: Beginning Again: Post-War Berlin

Chapter 6: Bathtubs and Jellyfish: Mammen and Post-War Cabaret

Conclusion
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Appendices

Editorial Reviews

In this study, Camilla Smith wrests Jeanne Mammen from narratives of a sexually liberated Weimar culture and its fall to reveal a more compelling and complex artist. With both sensitivity and precision, Smith illuminates the complexities of Mammen's 'inner emigration'—the fine lines between non—conformism and dissent, camouflage and accommodation—followed by the risks and possibilities of post—war culture in Berlin.” —Frederic J. Schwartz, Emeritus Professor of History of Art and Architecture, University College London, UK

“Beautifully illustrated and compulsively readable, Jeanne Mammen: Art Between Resistance and Conformity in Germany, 1916–1950 explores the dramatic life and multifaceted work of one of Europe's most innovative artists. Moving beyond the dazzling “Glitter and Doom” of Mammen's Weimar—era illustrations, Camilla Smith thematizes Mammen as an observer, artist, and translator, a woman alive to the possibilities of her age who lived through two world wars and negotiated her own inner immigration under the Nazi dictatorship. The is a thrilling new examination of an essential modernist artist whose significance has too long escaped scrutiny.” —Elizabeth Otto, Professor of Modern & Contemporary Art History, University at Buffalo (SUNY), USA

From the Publisher