George Grosz (1893-1959) is best remembered for his violent satirical drawings of the decadent Berlin of the 1920s, which depict a corrupt world of leering businessmen pawing at prostitutes. These drawings were collected and reproduced in publications such as Ecce Homo (1923). Ecce Homo was seized by the Public Prosecutor, and in February 1924 Grosz was tried for obscenity and fined 6,000 marks. It was perhaps this that prompted an extended trip to France, for the whole of April and May of 1924, resulting in his first French exhibition in that November, and a further extended spell in France from June to October in 1925. Grosz had studied in Paris in 1912 at the Atelier Colarossi, at which time he met likeminded artists such as Moise Kisling and Jules Pascin, and made friends with Bohemian figures such as the writer Pierre Mac Orlan. It was to Mac Orlan that Grosz turned for guidance to the new post-war Paris. As Hans Hess writes in his excellent biography George Grosz, "In April 1924 Grosz travelled to Paris for the first time since the war. With his old friend, Pierre Mac Orlan, he visited Pascin, and with Francis Carco and Man Ray, explored 'Montmartre at night', making the typical remark all visitors make that they 'went to those hidden places which no foreigner ever gets to know'." The kind of hidden places Mac Orlan and Carco favoured is made clear in the subjects of Grosz's Paris drawings: the brothel Le petit moulin, another famous maison close in the rue Blondel, or the seedy Bar du Dingo, full of pimps and their girls.
Lithograph, 1926
Lithograph, 1926
It was probably the following year that George Grosz made the eight original lithographs in this post, for a novella by Pierre Mac Orlan entitled Port d'eaux-mortes (eaux-mortes means a neap tide rather than the literal "dead waters", though no doubt Mac Orlan liked the metaphorical heft of the phrase). The book was published in 1926 by Au Sans Pareil, in a total edition of 1260 copies, plus 120 suites of the lithographs on Chine, 40 on Hollande, and 20 on vieux Japon. The title page reads: Pierre Mac Orlan, Port d'eaux-mortes, récit orné de huit lithographies originales de Georges Grosz. The lithographs were printed by Duchatel, Paris. The bulk of the edition (including my copy) was printed on vélin Lafuma de Voiron.
Lithograph, 1926
Lithograph, 1926
Lithograph, 1926
Lithograph, 1926
Lithograph, 1926
A copy of Port d'eaux-mortes from Harvard College Library was included in the exhibition The Artist and the Book, 1860-1960 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1961; see the catalogue of the same title by Eleanor M. Garvey, cat. no. 129, p. 91).
Lithograph, 1926
Marcel Vertès
Drypoint for Francis Carco, L'amour vénal, 1926
Marcel Vertès
Drypoint for Francis Carco, L'amour vénal, 1926
Marcel Vertès
Lithograph for Pierre Mac Orlan, Les jeux du demi-jour, 1926
Marcel Vertès
Lithograph for Pierre Mac Orlan, Les jeux du demi-jour, 1926
Marcel Vertès
Lithograph for Raymond Hesse, L'age d'or, 1926
Marcel Vertès
Lithograph for Raymond Hesse, L'age d'or, 1926
Marcel Vertès
Lithograph for Georges-Armand Masson, Tableau de la mode, 1926
Marcel Vertès
Lithograph for Georges-Armand Masson, Tableau de la mode, 1926
Etching for Tristan Bernard, Amants et voleurs, 1927
André Dignimont
Etching for Tristan Bernard, Amants et voleurs, 1927
André Dignimont
Etching for André Beucler, Un nouvel amour, 1927
André Dignimont
Etching for Francis Carco, Bob et Bobette s'amusent, 1930
André Dignimont
Etching for Francis Carco, Bob et Bobette s'amusent, 1930
Pierre Falké
Etching for Francis Carco, Les vrais de vrai, 1928
Pierre Falké
Etching for Francis Carco, Les vrais de vrai, 1928
Chas Laborde
Etching for Jean Giraudoux, Juliette au pays des hommes, 1926
3 comments:
I may have missed it, but I don't find Grosz's jaundiced eye in Dignimont, et al. Their works seem designed to amuse, to skate over the surface of things by being more decorative. To see them together is jarring but makes one think.
Jane - I may have overstated my case, but I do think Grosz had a strong influence on these artists, if only for a couple of years. In the case of Dignimont, only really for the Amants et voleurs etchings which are so much more violent and expressionist than the rest of his work, and in the case of Vertès largely for his work published in 1926 (his most important work, in my view, though I do admire his later output). None of the French artists had quite such a savage sense of disgust as Grosz, but they appropriated his visual aesthetic into their own art.
I wouldn't worry about overstating a case. Mae West once said "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful." With the exception of Grosz, I don't have a strong sense of what was typical for these other artists - but that's what makes seeing something new fun.
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