Die Zukunft der Vergangenheit Richard Oelze (1900 – 1980) and Post-war Reflection
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Eleanor F. Moseman
Abstract
The Surrealist artist Richard Oelze’s postwar enterprise was one of inner reflection and personal questioning linked to the broader project of coming to terms with the past. The essay takes a critical view of his artworks and his automatist Wortskizzen to assess the manner and extent to which Oelze utilizes his artistic practice as a mode of working through his, and Germany’s, complicity with the Nazi regime. Analysis of the Wortskizzen exposes how verbal probing informs Oelze’s visual expression of inner turmoil, while implied gaps and voids in paintings and drawings puncture space as well as time, illuminating memory and blending the past with the present. Oelze’s serious play with word and image in turn invites his viewers to release repressed memories through reflective contemplation.
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Photo Credits: 1, 2 Kunsthalle Bremen – Der Kunstverein in Bremen. – 3, 4 Kunsthalle Bremen – Der Kunstverein in Bremen, Photo: Karen Blindow. – 5 Kunsthalle Bremen – Der Kunstverein in Bremen, Photo: Lars Lohrisch. – 6 Collection of Jessica Davis and Family, Colorado and photographer Gary Huibregtse. – 7 Art Institute of Chicago. – 8 Hamburger Kunsthalle through bpk/Art Resource; Photo: © bpk/Hamburger Kunsthalle, Christoph Irrgang. – 9 Köln, Museum Ludwig through rba/Rheinisches Bildarchiv; Photo: © Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln, RBA 145 148. – 10 Berlin, Nationalgalerie through bpk/Art Resource; Photo: © bpk/Nationalgalerie, SMB, Jörg P. Anders.
© 2017 Eleanor F. Moseman, published by De Gruyter
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Aufsätze
- Andrea del Sarto’s Disputation on the Trinity and the “Sighs of Holy Desire”
- Giulio Romano und Andrea Palladio Die Landshuter Residenz Herzog Ludwigs X. und ihre Rezeption in den frühen Palastkonzepten Palladios
- “Framing and Fashioning of Images”: The Pictorial Invention of the Art Lover in Daniel Mytens’s Portrait of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel (ca 1618)
- “Must the Arts Suffer from the Progress of Reason?” Four Slave Statues, the 1790 Place des Victoires Debate, and the Urban Monument in Early Revolutionary France
- Die Zukunft der Vergangenheit Richard Oelze (1900 – 1980) and Post-war Reflection
- Buchbesprechungen
- Politik der Evidenz. Öffentliche Bilder als Bilder der Öffentlichkeit im Trecento
- Parergon. Attribut, Material und Fragment in der Bildästhetik des Quattrocento
- I segni nel tempo. Dibujos españoles de los Uffizi
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Aufsätze
- Andrea del Sarto’s Disputation on the Trinity and the “Sighs of Holy Desire”
- Giulio Romano und Andrea Palladio Die Landshuter Residenz Herzog Ludwigs X. und ihre Rezeption in den frühen Palastkonzepten Palladios
- “Framing and Fashioning of Images”: The Pictorial Invention of the Art Lover in Daniel Mytens’s Portrait of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel (ca 1618)
- “Must the Arts Suffer from the Progress of Reason?” Four Slave Statues, the 1790 Place des Victoires Debate, and the Urban Monument in Early Revolutionary France
- Die Zukunft der Vergangenheit Richard Oelze (1900 – 1980) and Post-war Reflection
- Buchbesprechungen
- Politik der Evidenz. Öffentliche Bilder als Bilder der Öffentlichkeit im Trecento
- Parergon. Attribut, Material und Fragment in der Bildästhetik des Quattrocento
- I segni nel tempo. Dibujos españoles de los Uffizi
