Artists in The Aesthetics of Resistance

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.

List of artists 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. 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 Ernst 1891–1976 Painter Visual arts / Person

AedW I, p. 57 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 1879–1940 PainterVisual arts / Person

AedW I, p. 57, 79; AedW III, p. 84in 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 Kandinsky 1866-1944 PainterVisual arts / Person

AedW I, p. 57; AedW II, p. 57 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 Schwitters 1887–1948 PainterFine Arts / Person

AedW I, p. 57listed 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 Dalí 1904-1989 Painter Fine Arts / Person

AedW I, S. 57listed 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 Magritte 1898–1967 Painter Fine Arts / Person

AedW I, S. 57listed 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 Dix 1891–1969 PainterFine Arts / Person

AedW I, S. 57; AedW III, S. 84 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 Grosz 1893-1959 PainterFine Arts / Person

AedW I, S. 57; AedW III, S. 84On 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 Feininger 1871–1956

PainterFine Arts / Person

AedW I, S. 57, 336 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 Nolde 1867–1956

PainterFine Arts / Person

AedW I, S. 57 AedW III, S. 84In 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 Kokoschka 1886-1980

PainterFine Arts / Person

AedW I, p. 57 in the line-up of some modernist painters whose pictures attacked social and political conditions and "het up reality". Max Beckmann 1884-1950

Painter Fine Arts / Person

AedW I, p. 57 AedW III, p. 84 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 Millet 1814-1895

PainterFine Arts / Person

AedW I, p. 62f.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 Mayakovsky 1893-1930

Writer Literature / Person Mayakovsky 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.

AedW I, pp. 66f., 69, 249 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 Malevich 1879-1935

PainterFine Arts / Person

AedW I, p. 66f.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 Joyce 1882-1941

WriterLiterature / Person

AedW I, p. 79In 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 Kafka 1883-1924

WriterLiterature / Person

AedW I, p. 79, 178 ff. 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 Schönberg 1874-1951

ComposerMusic / Person

AedW I, p. 79Enumerated 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 Stravinsky 1882-1971

ComposerMusic / Person

PainterFine Arts / Person

AedW I, pp. 79, 332-337, 339 f., 343, 348 AedW II, pp. 38, 57, 299Enumerated 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 Alighieri 1265-1321

Poet and philosopherLiterature / Person

AedW I, p. 79Enumerated 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 Neher 1900-1942

ActressPerforming Arts / Person

AedW I, p. 153 f. 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 Eisenstein 1898-1948

DirectorPerforming Arts / Person

AedW I, p. 157Example 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 Bredel 1901-1964

WriterPerforming Arts / Person

AedW I, S. 257 AedW II, S. 68Example 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 Hölderlin 1770-1843

PoetPerforming Arts / Person

AedW I, S. 257 AedW II, S. 68Enumeration 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 Fichte 1762–1814

PhilosopherLiterature / Person

AedW I, p. 257Enumeration 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 Hutten 1488–1523

HumanistLiterature / Person

AedW I, S. 257Enumeration and juxtaposition of some personalities in German cultural history: "(...) as also the enlightened, rational Hutten was displaced by the popular Luther". Martin Luther 1483–1546

TheologianLiterature / Person

Poet Literature / Person

Artists in The Aesthetics of Resistance

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