The artists in The Aesthetics of Resistance, of which there is a multitude that Peter Weiss included in his novel The Aesthetics of Resistance, form a kind of musée imaginaire (imagined museum) with more than a hundred named artists and just as many works of art, mainly visual arts and literature, but also performing arts and music.[1]
The following list is a supplement to the list of artworks in The Aesthetics of Resistance and contains about one hundred names of artists who are discussed, named, enumerated or included in detail in the novel. They are largely arranged in the order of their appearance in the book.[2] Exceptions are motifs, which are given a more detailed description on later pages after a brief mention.
| Illustration / Chronology | Artist / Origin | Work / Classification | Entry in the novel | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Max Ernst1891–1976 Painter | Visual arts / Person
| In the line-up of some modernist artists, especially Surrealism and Dadaism, whose paintings attacked social and political conditions and in which "flashes of fermentation and rot, panic and upheaval" could be seen. | ||
| Paul Klee1879–1940 Painter | Visual arts / Person
| in the line-up of some modernist artists, especially Surrealism and Dadaism, whose paintings attacked social and political conditions and in which flashes of fermentation and rot, panic and upheaval could be seen. Paul Klee is revisited several times in the novel as an example of the relationship between art and politics: We insisted that Joyce and Kafka, Schoenberg and Stravinsky, Klee and Picasso belonged to the same row that Dante was in. Culture and politics grew together until 1933: It was the whole atmosphere of vitality, of unlimited imagination, of delight in experimentation, that constituted cultural life | ||
| Wassily Kandinsky1866-1944 Painter | Visual arts / Person
| enumerated by way of example: enumerated in the series of some modernist painters, especially Surrealism and Dadaism, whose paintings attacked social and political conditions and in which there was a flashing illumination of fermentation and rot, panic and upheaval. Another mention in the novel is of Kandinsky as one of the painters about whose artistic revolution Leon Trotsky had commented on. | ||
| Kurt Schwitters1887–1948 Painter | Fine Arts / Person
| listed by way of example: in the line-up of some modernist painters, especially Surrealism and Dadaism, whose paintings attacked social and political conditions and in which flashes of fermentation and rot, panic and upheaval could be seen. | ||
| Salvador Dalí1904-1989 Painter | Fine Arts / Person
| listed by way of example: in the line-up of some modernist painters, especially Surrealism and Dadaism, whose paintings attacked social and political conditions and in which flashes of fermentation and rot, panic and upheaval could be seen. | ||
| René Magritte1898–1967 Painter | Fine Arts / Person
| listed by way of example: in the line-up of some modernist painters, especially Surrealism and Dadaism, whose paintings attacked social and political conditions and in which flashes of fermentation and rot, panic and upheaval could be seen. | ||
| Otto Dix1891–1969 Painter | Fine Arts / Person
| listed by way of example: in the line-up of some painters of modernism, here especially of New Objectivity, whose pictures attacked the social and political conditions and reflected the decay objectively and accurately. Culture and politics grew together until 1933: It was the whole atmosphere of vitality, of unlimited imagination, of the desire to experiment, that constituted cultural life. | ||
| George Grosz1893-1959 Painter | Fine Arts / Person
| On the line-up of some painters of modernism, here especially of New Objectivity, whose pictures attacked the social and political conditions and reflected the decay in a matter-of-fact and accurate way. Towards the end of the novel, the idea is rounded off with his example, among others. Culture and politics grew together until 1933: It was the whole atmosphere of vitality, of unlimited imagination, of delight in experimentation, that made up cultural life. | ||
| Lyonel Feininger1871–1956 Painter | Fine Arts / Person
| In the ranking of some modernist painters whose pictures attacked social and political conditions and whose pictures sharply dissected and measured existing reality The idea is taken up again in the discussion of Picasso's Guernica. | ||
| Emil Nolde1867–1956 Painter | Fine Arts / Person
| In the line-up of some modernist painters whose pictures attacked social and political conditions and heated up reality. Towards the end of the novel, the idea is rounded off with his example, among others. Culture and politics grew together until 1933: It was the whole atmosphere of vitality, of unlimited imagination, of delight in experimentation, that made up cultural life. | ||
| Oskar Kokoschka1886-1980 Painter | Fine Arts / Person
| in the line-up of some modernist painters whose pictures attacked social and political conditions and "het up reality". | ||
| Max Beckmann1884-1950 Painter | Fine Arts / Person
| In the line-up of some modernist painters whose pictures attacked social and political conditions and "het up reality". Towards the end of the novel, the idea is rounded off with his example, among others. Culture and politics grew together until 1933: "It was the whole atmosphere of vitality, of unlimited imagination, of delight in experimentation, that constituted cultural life." But the departure from this idealism is also questioned. Beckmann belonged to the left-wing verist wing of the New Objectivity, his works were ostracised by the Nazis as "degenerate", and he himself managed to emigrate in 1937. At a lecture in 1938, he adhered to a strict separation between spirit and politics and stated that he had never been politically active. | ||
| Jean-François Millet1814-1895 Painter | Fine Arts / Person
| With the discussion of some of Millet's paintings, his personal background is also included and it is asked whether a certain resistant potential can be read from his paintings due to his origins as a farmer's son. | ||
| Vladimir Mayakovsky1893-1930 Writer | Literature / PersonMayakovsky was a leading exponent of Russian Futurism and was considered a Soviet model poet in the early 1920's. Towards the end of the 1920s, he criticised developments in Soviet society. On 14 April 1930, he shot himself in the heart with a pistol.
| The protagonists take Mayakovsky in particular as an example of the upheaval in the Soviet Union's conception of culture and the suppression of expressionist statements by Stalinism: "With his suicide, Mayakovsky (...) had anticipated the disaster that was now befalling the Soviet state". | ||
| Kazimir Malevich1879-1935 Painter | Fine Arts / Person
| In a ranking of artists whose expressionist statements were suppressed in the early Soviet Union and especially by Stalinism: "Why was an art that was revolutionary denied and ostracised, (...) why was a narrow limitation of receptivity introduced when a Mayakovsky, Blok, Bedny, Yesenin and Bely, a Malevich, Lissitzky, Tatlin, Vakhtangov, Teirov, Eisenstein or Vertov had found the language identical with a new universal consciousness". | ||
| James Joyce1882-1941 Writer | Literature / Person
| In a ranking of artists whose art could change social being: "We insisted that Joyce and Kafka, Schönberg and Stravinsky, Klee and Picasso were in the same rank as Dante." | ||
| Franz Kafka1883-1924 Writer | Literature / Person
| Enumerated in a ranking of artists whose art could change social being: "We insisted that Joyce and Kafka, Schönberg and Stravinsky, Klee and Picasso were in the same rank as Dante."Kafka's unfinished novel The Castle is one of the works discussed at length in the novel. | ||
| Arnold Schönberg1874-1951 Composer | Music / Person
| Enumerated in a ranking of artists whose art could change social being: "We insisted that Joyce and Kafka, Schoenberg and Stravinsky, Klee and Picasso were in the same rank as Dante." | ||
| Igor Stravinsky1882-1971 Composer | Music / Person
| Enumerated in a ranking of artists whose art could change social being: "We insisted that Joyce and Kafka, Schoenberg and Stravinsky, Klee and Picasso were in the same rank as Dante." | ||
| Pablo Picasso1881-1973 Painter | Fine Arts / Person
| Enumerated in a ranking of artists whose art could change social being: "We insisted that Joyce and Kafka, Schoenberg and Stravinsky, Klee and Picasso were in the same rank as Dante."Picasso's painting Guernica is one of the works discussed at length in the novel. | ||
| Dante Alighieri1265-1321 Poet and philosopher | Literature / Person
| Enumerated in a ranking of artists whose art could change social being: "We insisted that Joyce and Kafka, Schoenberg and Stravinsky, Klee and Picasso belonged to the same rank in which Dante found himself."Dante's story The Divine Comedy is one of the works discussed at length in the novel. | ||
| Carola Neher1900-1942 Actress | Performing Arts / Person
| In the context of the protagonists' discussion of Stalin's purges in the Soviet Union, Neher's arrest in July 1936, and indictment in the Moscow Trials. | ||
| Sergei Eisenstein1898-1948 Director | Performing Arts / Person
| Example of a list of cultural contributions about Soviet film in the Arbeiter Illustrierte (AIZ): "It introduced many of us to the problems of art, literature, science. Here was carried on in the picture what the great (...) films of Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Ekk, Vertov had stimulated." | ||
| Willi Bredel1901-1964 Writer | Performing Arts / Person
| Example in a list of contemporary workers' writers: "In the books of Kläber, Gotsche, Hoelz, Bredel, Marchwitza or Neukrantz, the proletarian reality confronted us, between dreary, gray weariness and open struggle." In scenes of the Spanish Civil War, Bredel is mentioned even more times. | ||
| Friedrich Hölderlin1770-1843 Poet | Performing Arts / Person
| Enumeration and juxtaposition of some personalities in the German cultural history: "Not the insights of Hölderlin, his Hellenism, this disguise of the spirit of the French revolution (...) had become effective in the nature of the Germans, but the Germanizing chauvinism of Fichte. (...) This disproportion between the titans, these pillars of the authorities, who denied the people reason and the right to independence and recommended them surrendered obedience, and revolutionary, ostracized, outcast figures like Forster, Kleist, Grabbe, Büchner, Heine had never allowed the development of humanism in Germany to arise." | ||
| Johann Gottlieb Fichte1762–1814 Philosopher | Literature / Person
| Enumeration and juxtaposition of some personalities in German cultural history: "Not Hölderlin's insights, his Hellenism, this disguise of the spirit of the French Revolution (...) had become effective in the nature of the Germans, but the Germanizing chauvinism of Fichte." | ||
| Ulrich von Hutten1488–1523 Humanist | Literature / Person
| Enumeration and juxtaposition of some personalities in German cultural history: "(...) as also the enlightened, rational Hutten was displaced by the popular Luther". | ||
| Martin Luther1483–1546 Theologian | Literature / Person
| Enumeration and juxtaposition of some personalities in German cultural history: "(...) as also the enlightened, rational Hutten was displaced by the popular Luther". | ||
| Johann Gottfried Herder1744-1803 Poet | Literature / Person
| Enumeration and juxtaposition of some personalities in German cultural history: "(...) the soberly scientific Herder was displaced by the emotionally idealistic Goethe". | ||
| Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1749–1832 Poet | Literature / Person
| Enumeration and juxtaposition of some personalities in German cultural history: "(...) the soberly scientific Herder was displaced by the emotionally idealistic Goethe". | ||
| Immanuel Kant1724–1804 Philosopher | Literature / Person
| Enumeration and juxtaposition of some personalities in German cultural history: "(...) the dry Kant, limiting himself to the human realm of experience, was pushed to the wall by the metaphysical Hegel." | ||
| Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel1770–1831 Philosopher | Literature / Person
| Enumeration and juxtaposition of some personalities in German cultural history: "(...) the dry Kant, limiting himself to the human realm of experience, was pushed to the wall by the metaphysical Hegel." | ||
| Richard Wagner1813-1883 Composer | Music / Person
| Enumeration and juxtaposition of some personalities in German cultural history: "Therein (...) were to be found the reasons for the fascist mass psychosis, which wrapped itself in the sounds of Wagner and abused Beethoven". | ||
| Ludwig van Beethoven1770-1831 Composer | Music / Person
| Enumeration and comparison of some personalities in German cultural history: "Therein (...) were to be found the reasons for the fascist mass psychosis, which wrapped itself in the sounds of Wagner and abused Beethoven". | ||
| Thomas Mann1875-1955 Writer | Literature / Person
| Mention of his career from liberal author to opponent of the fascist dictatorship and discussion of his relationship between art and politics. | ||
| Francisco de Goya1746–1828 Painter | Fine Arts / Person
| Francisco de Goya, and his work in particular, is discussed several times in the course of the novel. First, he is mentioned in the first-person narrator's ideas of the country and republic of Spain through memories of "Goya's Caprichos and Desastres, of poems by Lorca, of images from a surrealist film by Luis Buñuel". | ||
| Federico García Lorca1898-1936 Writer | Literature / Person
| The first-person narrator's ideas of the country and republic of Spain are shaped by memories of "Goya's Caprichos and Desastres, of poems by Lorca, of images from a surrealist film by Buñuel." | ||
| Luis Buñuel1900-1983 Director | Performing Arts / Person
| The first-person narrator's ideas of the country and republic of Spain are shaped by memories of "Goya's Caprichos and Desastres, of poems by Lorca, of images from a surrealist film by Buñuel." | ||
| Aeschylus525 - 456 BC Poet | Literature / PersonAeschylus is the oldest of the three great Greek tragedians. He took part as a soldier for Athens in the battle of Marathon against the Persians in 490 BC.
| He is mentioned as the role model of a protagonist in the Spanish Civil War: "In politics, in the art of the possible, there is no place for feelings, and even in the art of the impossible, which encompasses our emotions, our sense of form, our poetic sense, everything must now be under the sign of the necessary. (...) Our model is Aeschylus, who went into the field heavily armed." | ||
| Eugène Delacroix1798-1863 Painter | Fine Arts / Person
| Reflections on the personal background with which Delacroix painted the confrontation in Paris in 1830: "Hitherto he had transposed his dissolute fantasies into infernal journeys and slaughter (...) now he was trying to give shape to this July day in the throes of which he had been caught. Driven by idealism and also by arrogance, which was part of the feeling of uselessness that sometimes overshadowed his life, he wanted to participate in the unstoppable force that urged change". | ||
| Théodore Géricault1791–1824 Painter | Fine Arts / Person
| An examination of the painter's personal background: "Similarly, Géricault's vision emerged from a harried, disturbed life in which the unruliness, the constant flight from oneself, found expression at first in the military campaigns and the collapse of the Napoleonic empire, in broadly and violently painted martial scenes, and later in wildly coursing horses". | ||
| Vincent van Gogh1853–1890 Painter | Fine Arts / Person
| An examination of Van Gogh's work is made in several sections of the novel, particularly within the depiction of an imaginary scene in which the protagonists meet the artist in Montmartre: "He wanted nothing more than his right to work, his right to dispose of his own work, he wanted the free community of art workers. | ||
| Émile Bernard1868–1941 Painter | Fine Arts / PersonBernard was a friend of Van Gogh and is considered to have played a major role in Synthetic Symbolism.
| Mention in an imaginary scene of meeting Van Gogh at the Café du Tambourin in Montmartre. | ||
| Henri Rousseau1844–1910 Painter | Fine Arts / Peraon
| Description of the legendary banquet at the Bateau-Lavoir in 1908, celebrated on the occasion of the sale of a painting by Rousseau. The depiction in the novel is stylised like a self-portrait of the painter. | ||
| Hans Arp1886-1966 Painter and lyricist | Visual Arts / PersonHans Arp is considered one of the most important representatives of Dadaism and Surrealism in both visual art and literature. He was a member of the Abstraction-Création group.
| List of artists who stood up for a revolting art: "Living between international newspapers and magazines, between pamphlets, manifestos, emissaries travelling back and forth, the inventions of a Cravan, Picabia, Duchamp, Arp, Apollinaire had entered us, no one could say where we had acquired the openness for such experimentation, the explanation was perhaps only again that our senses had been sharpened by all the humiliations and chastisements. | ||
| Ernst Toller1893-1939 Writer | Literature / Person Ernst Toller was a participant in the Munich Soviet republic, and in the 1920s created plays in the style of the New Objectivity that received much public attention. In 1933, he emigrated from Germany, and from 1935 he supported the Spanish Republic with publications and fundraising. After the announcement of defeat, he committed suicide.
| Portrayals of Toller's life and arguments about his political impact as well as his suicide after numerous personal setbacks and defeat in the Spanish Civil War. He killed himself because he saw no political way out. "His whole work had been an indictment against the disempowerment of the individual, (...) he had to let himself be crushed, and yet in his defenselessness he was more honest than the others who entrench themselves behind restraint". | ||
| Carl von Ossietzky1889-1938 Writer and journalist | Literature / Person Carl von Ossietzky was the editor of the journal Die Weltbühne. He was arrested in 1933, interned and severely maltreated. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935, but was forbidden to accept it personally by the Nazi government. He died in 1938 as a result of his imprisonment.
| Account by Rosalinde von Ossietzky-Palm, the daughter of Carl von Ossietzky, who is included as a protagonist in the novel, of the persecution and death of her father. | ||
| Bertolt Brecht1898-1956 Writer | Literature / Person
| Depicted in a scene in the garden of the house in Lidingö where the "Brechtian extended family" lived in exile until the end of 1939. | ||
| Helene Weigel1900-1971 Actor | Performing Arts / Person
| Depicted in a scene in the garden of the house in Lidingö where the "Brechtian extended family" lived in exile until the end of 1939. | ||
| Margarete Steffin1908-1941 Writer, actor | Literature / Person
| Depicted in a scene in the garden of the house in Lidingö where the "Brechtian extended family" lived in exile until the end of 1939. | ||
| Ruth Berlau1906-1974 Actress | Performing Arts / Person
| Depicted in a scene in the garden of the house in Lidingö where the "Brechtian extended family" lived in exile until the end of 1939. | ||
| Diego Velázquez1599-1660 Painter | Fine Arts / Person
| Listed as court painter whose paintings were exhibited in the Royal Palace of El Pardo. | ||
| Carl Fredrik Hill1849–1911 Painter | Fine Arts / Person
| Listed as an example of a Swedish artist misunderstood by his time, driven to madness: "this city, where your reason shall be choked off by the philistines, where you shall perish among the lukewarm, the indolent." | ||
| Ernst Josephson1851–1906 Painter | Fine Arts / Person
| Listed as an example of a Swedish artist misunderstood by his time, driven to madness: "this city, where your reason shall be choked off by the philistines, where you shall perish among the lukewarm, the indolent." | ||
| August Strindberg1849-1912 Writer | Literature / Person
| Listed as an example of a Swedish artist who was misunderstood by his time, driven to madness: "this city, in which your reason is to be strangled by the philistines, in which you are to perish among the lukewarm, the indolent". | ||
| Alexander Girardi1850-1918 Actor | Performing Arts / Person Girardi enjoyed great success as a vocal comedian at the Theater an der Wien for well over 20 years at the end of the 19th century and around the turn of the century. One of his famous roles was Torelli in the play Künstlerblut by Edmund Eysler.
| Listed during the extensive enumeration of Brecht's library as a statement by Brecht, who could not part with a book about Girardi's life: "His Torelli, in the Singspiel Künstlerblut, (...) must have been Kafka's model, in the characterisation of the painter Titorelli, in the trial." | ||
| Karin Boye1900-1941 Writer | Literature Boye's poetry reflects all the intellectual currents of modernity. Her main work, the novel Kallocain, is strongly influenced by Jonathan Swift and takes a very gloomy view of the future. On 24 April 1941, Karin Boye committed suicide by poisoning in a forest near Alingsås.
| The writer is the protagonist in the third part of the novel and influences the development of the first-person narrator as a writer in a field of tension contrasted with Brecht. Her last months in Alingsås and her suicide are also depicted. | ||
| Elisabeth Schumacher1904-1942 Graphic artist | Fine Arts / Person Elisabeth Schumacher was a resistance fighter in the circle of the Red Orchestra (Rote Kapelle). She was executed on 22 December 1942 in Plötzensee prison.
| Elisabeth Schumacher is named several times in the novel for her history in the resistance, but her artistic work is not listed. | ||
| Oda Schottmüller1905-1943 Dancer and sculptor | Performing Arts / Person Oda Schottmüller was an active member of the Red Orchestra (Rote Kapelle) and was executed on 5 August 1943 together with Liane Berkowitz, Cato Bontjes van Beek, Eva-Maria Buch, Hilde Coppi, Ursula Goetze, Emil Hübner, Adam Kuckhoff, Ingeborg Kummerow, Klara Schabbel, Rose Schlösinger, Maria Terwiel, Frida Wesolek and Stanislaus Wesolek in Plötzensee prison.
| Schottmüller is mentioned several times in the novel. The scene of the execution of the members of the Red Orchestra on 5 August 1943 and other murders of resistance fighters against Nazism, choreographically described as a dance of death, is haunting. | ||
| Kurt Schumacher1905-1942 Sculptor | Fine Arts / Person Kurt Schumacher was a resistance fighter in the circle of the Red Orchestra. He was executed on 22 December 1942 in Plötzensee Prison in Berlin.
| Mentioned several times, especially his farewell letter, in which he consoled himself, "the sculptor saw himself next to Riemenschneider, Veit Stoss and Jörg Ratgeb, who had all been drawn into the people's wars with their art". | ||
| Tilman Riemenschneider1460-1531 Sculptor | Fine Arts / Person Riemenschneider is considered one of the most important carvers and sculptors in the transition from the late Gothic to the Renaissance.
| The sculptor mentioned by Kurt Schumacher in his farewell letter was arrested and tortured after his involvement in the Peasants' Wars | ||
| Jerg Ratgeb1480-1526 Sculptor | Fine Arts / Person Ratgeb lost his rights as a citizen of Heilbronn because of his marriage to a serf and moved to Stuttgart. As a member of the council, he negotiated with the rebellious peasants in 1525, by whom he was elected as war councillor and chancellor. After the suppression of the rebels, he was accused of high treason and executed in Pforzheim in 1526.
| Kurt Schumacher includes the sculptor in his farewell letter. | ||
| Veit Stoss1447-1533 Sculptor | Fine Arts / Person Veit Stoss is considered one of the most important sculptors and carvers of the late Gothic period.
| The sculptor mentioned by Kurt Schumacher in his farewell letter was branded on both cheeks with red-hot iron after being charged with forgery of documents. | ||
| Hilde Rubinstein1904-1997 Painter and poet | Fine Arts / Person Hilde Rubinstein was imprisoned as a member of the Communist Party of Germany in 1933, was able to emigrate via Belgium and the Netherlands in 1934 and reached Sweden in 1935. In 1936 and 1937 she lived in the Soviet Union, but was threatened with extradition to the German Reich for Trotskyist activities. She fled to Sweden again via Poland and Latvia. She secured her livelihood with various temporary jobs, and later worked as a painter and writer. After the war she stayed in Gothenburg.
| Mentioned among many other listed artists who had made odysseys and sought opportunities for their artistic work in Swedish exile. |