SALZBURG.- Major social changes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—the rise of mass culture, women’s striving for emancipation, and the discovery of youth as a relevant demographic—spark a battle against “filth and trash” in popular media. So-called dime novels, deemed “trash,” can only be sold under the counter, while allegedly pornographic materials are reviled as “filth.” A concerted effort is made to prevent the distribution of images that grossly violate the public’s sense of decency. The contents of these cheaply made publications revolve around outlaws, acts of violence, and the vices of the big city—the sex-and-crime formula—or around bloodcurdling characters, monsters, and demons. The same motifs may also be found in the visual arts.

The exhibition Nervous and Angry. “Filth and Trash” from the Collection of the Museum der Moderne Salzburg gathers a rich selection of works, all from the museum’s own holdings, that explore these themes. It reveals how many artists fell for the fascination of true crime stories and found inspiration in the deeds of real-world villains. An early example is William Hogarth’s (London, GB, 1697–1764) series of engravings “A Harlot’s Progress” (1732), in which the artist’s notorious contemporary Colonel Francis Charteris, who had been found guilty of rape in a sensational trial and sentenced to death, makes an appearance. Almost two centuries later, in 1913, Oskar Kokoschka (Pöchlarn, AT, 1886–Villeneuve, CH, 1980) illustrates Karl Kraus’s essay The Great Wall of China (1909), which is based on a sex murder in New York’s Chinatown; Alfred Hrdlicka (Vienna, AT, 1928–2009), for his part, studies the illustrious serial killers known as the “Werewolf of Hannover” and the “Lonely Hearts Killers,” who now figure in the histories of film as well as crime.

Women artists are underrepresented in the museum’s collections—a fact that is also reflected in this exhibition. Works by men dominate the show, while women appear primarily as the protagonists of the pictures, and as victims.

The presentation is divided into seven thematic sections. The Art Education department’s complementary project The Second Glance expands on issues of contemporary relevance raised in the exhibition.

With works by Max Beckmann, Uwe Bremer and H. C. Artmann, Georg Eisler, James Ensor, Paul Gangolf, Otto Gleichmann, George Grosz, Margarete Hamerschlag, Carry Hauser, Wolfgang Herzig, William Hogarth, Alfred Hrdlicka, Karl Hubbuch, Franz Janz, Paul Kleinschmidt, Max Klinger, Oskar Kokoschka, Konrad Koller, Käthe Kollwitz, Elke Krystufek, Alfred Kubin, Edvard Munch, Walter Navratil, Gerhard Rühm, Max Slevogt, Elfriede Trautner, and Werkstatt Rixdorfer Drucke.

A look at the sections of the exhibition

Peeking through the keyhole

Risqué themes are especially apt to arouse viewers’ curiosity, an insight that the abovementioned William Hogarth already capitalized on. To sell his graphic series, he designed a dedicated subscription ticket that later became known under the title Boys Peeping at Nature (1730). It shows three putti and a satyr. Two of the putti are busy drawing the statue of the manybreasted Ephesian Diana, while the third tries to stop the satyr from taking a peek under the goddess’s skirt.

The voyeuristic interaction between the anonymous thrill-seekers and the individuals whom the image captures and presents to them is asymmetrical: the observers hold power. It is a privileged position most often occupied by men, who define woman as a spectacle. Deconstructivist theorists were the first to make an in-depth study of this phenomenon, but women criticized the power disparity implicit in it as early as the turn of the century.

Decades later, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Gerhard Rühm’s (Vienna, AT, 1930–Cologne, DE) photomontages Schöner Wohnen und Interieurs offer a critique of the staid postwar culture around him. Working with photographs from the German interior design magazine Schöner Wohnen, he replaces segments such as the traditional embellishments on the walls with highly salacious motifs.

Demimonde

The prostitute is all over the visual art of the 1920s. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (Aschaffenburg, DE, 1880–Davos, CH, 1938) paints cocottes (as prostitutes were called in imperial-era Germany) in fashionable attire, while the Verists, the socially critical faction within the New Objectivity, create the type of the homely prostitute. In deftly playing on the visual habits of educated middleclass audiences, whom the tradition of the artistic nude had taught to expect depictions of immaculate female bodies that were erotically pleasing yet stopped short of violating sexual taboos, these artists—among them luminaries like George Grosz (Berlin, DE, 1893–1959) and Paul Gangolf (Berlin, DE, 1897–Esterwegen concentration camp, DE, 1936)—also unmask the beholder’s voyeuristic attitude. At the same time, their works document a darker side of modern urban society. Decades later, Georg Eisler returns to the motif of venal sexuality.




… With a dagger in his robe

Depictions of violence in art serve a wide range of purposes: beyond their documentary dimension, such images are meant, on the one hand, to articulate secret fears and help the artist exorcise them or cope with traumatic experiences. On the other hand, the aesthetic reproduction of destructive incidents reflects a fascination with violence to match audiences’ craving for sensation. Nor should we underestimate artists’ zeal for provocation.

Both Max Klinger (Leipzig, DE, 1857–Großjena, DE, 1920) and Max Slevogt (Landshut, DE, 1868–Neukastel, DE, 1932) take offense at the hypocrisy of their time and turn to themes that were taboo in the art of the nineteenth century: armed insurrections, prostitution—and murder and mayhem. Max Beckmann (Leipzig, DE, 1884–New York, NY, US, 1950), meanwhile, makes it clear that not even home sweet home is safe, relocating the violent deed into the domestic interior. A pervasive sense of insecurity in all domains of life is one of the defining experiences of the years after the First World War. An especially remarkable contribution to this section is a work by a woman artist, Margarete Hamerschlag (Vienna, AT, 1902–London, GB, 1958), then just twenty-one years old: her 1923 series of woodcuts titled “Die Stadt” (The city), in which she grapples with the social injustices of the modern metropolis, concludes with the print Der Mord (The murder).

Underworld

Al Capone (New York, NY, US, 1899–Palm Island, FL, US, 1947) has become a cultural icon. The fact that he was the boss of the Italian-American Mafia syndicate Chicago Outfit does nothing to diminish the fascination his name exerts. Bloody gang wars accompanied his rise. His mythical stature as the “king of the underworld” was a product first and foremost of his knack for showmanship. He skillfully used the mass media to his advantage. The first plans to make the story of his life into a motion picture were drawn up in Hollywood shortly after his death. Richard Wilson’s movie Al Capone starring Rod Steiger, released in 1959, was the first in a long series of adaptations including, prominently, Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables (1987) featuring Robert De Niro in the role of the mob boss.

The fascination of the Al Capone myth proved irresistible to Walter Navratil (Klosterneuburg, AT, 1950–Vienna, AT, 2003), whose elegantly attired mafia don beams at us with a wide camera-ready smile. The multipart cycle of paintings on the notorious star of the Chicago underworld has been restored for this exhibition at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg and is on public display for the first time.

Battle of the sexes

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, women’s pursuit of emancipation and the challenge they pose to male prerogatives in politics and public life fill many contemporaries with profound unease, as they appear to destabilize the two mainstays of the state and society: the marital bond and the family. One incarnation of this menace is the femme fatale type, which finds its way into art as well. Edvard Munch (Løten, NO, 1863– Oslo, NO, 1944) varies the motif in numerous paintings, all titled Vampire. A man is resting in the arms of a red-haired woman, whose lips touch his neck In Austria, no one adds more fuel to the combustible debate over the independent women insisting on their erotic freedom than the Viennese writer Otto Weininger. His book Sex and Character (1903) is an impassioned harangue against man’s subjection to woman’s sexual demands. Oskar Kokoschka’s drama Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen (Murderer, hope of womankind) picks up on these theses. The play’s two anonymous protagonists are archetypes, “Man” and “Woman” as such, and embodiments of the eternal battle of the sexes.

Evil lust/fatal love

The nineteenth century sees the birth of criminology, which brings scientific methods to the study of crime. Where interest was previously focused on guilt, the new discipline is dedicated primarily to an analysis of the criminal individual’s personality. And a new character enters the stage, the counterpart of the femme fatale: the sex killer, whose motivation is attributed to a pathological sexual urge.

The discourse around the lust murder—its central figure is the “imported” myth of Jack the Ripper, who kills at least five prostitutes in London in 1888—is especially lively in the German-speaking countries. The yellow press covers the investigations in great detail, reveling in the gruesome particulars. Jack the Ripper becomes the prototypical sex killer, inspiring a large number of real-world imitators and captivating the imaginations of writers like Frank Wedekind and visual artists like George Grosz. Various semantic levels and iconographic frameworks converge in the sexual murder motif. There is the dimension of social critique, but also stylistic devices associated with the grotesque that lace the scenes of unfathomable horror with a spine-chilling ludicrousness. And the deconstruction of the female nude, which in the academic tradition epitomized the artist’s creative power, goes hand in hand with reflections on artistic practice and the relationship between painter and model.

Twilit worlds

The phrase “twilit worlds” is coined by Alfred Kubin (Leitmeritz, now CZ, 1877–Zwickledt, AT, 1959), who says of himself: “I am the impresario of the dubious, chimeric, dusky, dreamlike. My aspiration is to live this mysterious realm, which has struck deep roots in my humanity, and to cast it into definite artistic forms.” Many artists find that the theme of the uncanny allows them to address current political and social upheavals. Demons, witches, and devils are the personifications of unspeakable fears, desires, and urges that, displaced by the rationality of the industrialized world, vehemently demand an outlet. Visual art and literature are closely intertwined in the fantastic genre. Edgar Allan Poe, the virtuoso of horror, is a source of inspiration for numerous artists, perhaps none more than James Ensor (Ostend, BE, 1860–1949). Curator: Barbara Herzog