GRMN 700: André Dombrowski, "Spitzweg's Bureaucrats"

GRMN 700: André Dombrowski, "Spitzweg's Bureaucrats"

This presentation considers the preference for anti-heroic subjects of bourgeois life in German painting of the mid-19th century, focusing especially on Carl Spitzweg’s many depictions of school masters, librarians, postal workers, low-level bureaucrats, mid-ranking military men at times shown knitting at a cannon, and the like. As Baudelaire focused his attention on the flâneur, the prostitute, and the Parisienne as the archetypes of the new modern order, giving the French avant-garde its famous set of figures, themes, and imaginary viewing positions, Spitzweg turned a sarcastic eye toward the more normative, conservative, if not to say boring and uneventful, aspects of modern bourgeois life. In particular, I will focus on a set of Spitzweg’s paintings of so-called “cacti lovers”—old gentlemen with a predilection for the prickly and slow-growing—that embody this type of modern anti-hero. The history of art has heretofore had difficulties admitting to the more hackneyed, norm-affirming and unfashionable aspects of bourgeois existence and their strange appeal for modern life painting. This presentation seeks to understand the attraction of Spitzweg’s motives in the social and political contexts of mid-nineteenth century Germany.

Coffee and breakfast will be served.