The National Gallery of Canada features "The 1930s ~ The Making of "The New Man"

Written by Eddie Ackley Tuesday, 22 February 2011 22:28

Ottawa, Canada - The 1930s: The Making of "The New Man" exhibition, on view at the National Gallery of Canada. The exhibition, which has already attracted more than 50,000 visitors, has been well received by both critics and public. While the 1930s are known above all for the political upheavals that led to World War II, this decade merits being examined from another viewpoint. A North American exclusive, the exhibition The 1930s: The Making of “The New Man” brings together over 200 extraordinary works that explore the seminal link between art and biology.

The 1930’s: The Making of “The New Man” brings together paintings, sculptures, and photographs by 103 European and North American artists including Jean Arp, Vassily Kandinsky, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalί, Alberto Giacometti, August Sander, Diego Rivera, Alex Colville, Hart Benton, Grant Wood, Ivan Albright and Walker Evans. These works are grouped together under nine themes: Genesis, Convulsive Beauty, “The Will to Power,” The Making of “The New Man”, Mother Earth, The Appeal of Classicism, “Faces of our Time,” “Crowds and Power,” and The Charnel House.

Over 95% of the works presented in this exhibition are loans secured from some of the most prestigious public and private collections in Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Holland, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Spain, Russia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Mexico, the United States and Canada.

Going through the exhibition with the Bell audioguide allows the visitor to better understand the context in which the works were created. The audioguide gathers several historical anecdotes that give another dimension to the visitor’s experience by offering a wealth of information. For instance, we learn that the work The Four Elements : Fire, Water, Earth and Air, by Adolf Ziegler, one of Hitler’s preferred painters, embodied the Nazi ideology to the extent that Hitler hung this work in the living room of his Munich residence. In the work The Judgment of Paris, painted by Ivo Saliger, an official artist of the Third Reich, the artist portrays the Trojan Prince Paris, clad in the emblematic Hitler Youth uniform, selects the perfect Aryan woman to propagate the Germanic race.

One cannot remain indifferent to the paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs created at a time in which biology became a guiding, and often destructive force. The 1930s saw the dissemination of the contrasting concepts of the “degenerate” artist and those of “superman” or “The New Man”, which were spreading through Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union as well as overseas. The exhibition affords a unique opportunity to see works by eminent European artists such as Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Vassily Kandinsky, Max Ernst and August Sander, and North American artists like Grant Wood, Jackson Pollock, Walker Evans and Alex Colville.

In addition to examining the relationship between art and life science and the emergence of “The New Man”, the nine key thematic groups of the exhibition also reveal the wavering course of a troubling decade that nurtures and controls, strengthens and exterminates.

Presented by the National Gallery of Canada . . Visit : www.gallery.ca/