Gross Marxist Simplicism

George Grosz By Hans Hess Macmillan, 272 pp., $22.50 The appearance of a full-length biography of the artist George Grosz, lavishly illustrated in color and black and white, should be an occasion for rejoicing, since such a study has long been needed. Unfortunately, however, the present volume does not live up to its promise. It is marred not only by bad, often ungrammatical English, but more importantly, it presents a distorted view of the artist and his times, while its errors of detail are too numerous to list.

Hans Hess, described on the dustjacket as lecturer in art history at the University of Sussex and author of “articles on the art and politics of the Weimar Republic and Marxist art theory,” has had access to hitherto unpublished material in the Grosz archives at Princeton and at the Academy of Art in West Berlin. However, his pronounced leftwing bias, evident from the first page, leads one to suspect he has omitted as many sources as he has included. He views Grosz, with Marxist simplicism, as an incipient schizophrenic, half great artist and half provincial Prussian petit-bourgeois afflicted with “mildly megalomaniac ambition” to become rich and famous in the manner of Thomas Mann’s Felix Krull. Grosz was true to his “real” self, in Mr. Hess’s view, only during his Berlin years when he was a member of the Communist Party and producing those bitter castigations of war, militarism, “the ruling classes” which still, for most of us, epitomize the ambience of Berlin in the 1920s. The real reason, Mr. Hess implies, for Grosz’s emigration to the United States in 1932 was to make money. The fact that he could have earned far more money here had he remained faithful to his political leftism and gone on drawing and painting the caricatures which had brought him world fame, instead of trying to start all over again as man and artist, cuts no ice with the author. To him, Grosz’s 22 years as an American citizen were wasted, a betrayal of his ideals and talent in a vain effort to get rich.

RB

About the Author

Ruth Berenson

Featured Tags

George Grosz By Hans Hess Macmillan, 272 pp., $22.50 The appearance of a full-length biography of the artist George Grosz, lavishly illustrated in color and black and white, should be an occasion for rejoicing, since such a study has long been needed. Unfortunately, however, the present volume does not live up to its promise. It is marred not only by bad, often ungrammatical English, but more importantly, it presents a distorted view of the artist and his times, while its errors of detail are too numerous to list.

Hans Hess, described on the dustjacket as lecturer in art history at the University of Sussex and author of “articles on the art and politics of the Weimar Republic and Marxist art theory,” has had access to hitherto unpublished material in the Grosz archives at Princeton and at the Academy of Art in West Berlin. However, his pronounced leftwing bias, evident from the first page, leads one to suspect he has omitted as many sources as he has included. He views Grosz, with Marxist simplicism, as an incipient schizophrenic, half great artist and half provincial Prussian petit-bourgeois afflicted with “mildly megalomaniac ambition” to become rich and famous in the manner of Thomas Mann’s Felix Krull. Grosz was true to his “real” self, in Mr. Hess’s view, only during his Berlin years when he was a member of the Communist Party and producing those bitter castigations of war, militarism, “the ruling classes” which still, for most of us, epitomize the ambience of Berlin in the 1920s. The real reason, Mr. Hess implies, for Grosz’s emigration to the United States in 1932 was to make money. The fact that he could have earned far more money here had he remained faithful to his political leftism and gone on drawing and painting the caricatures which had brought him world fame, instead of trying to start all over again as man and artist, cuts no ice with the author. To him, Grosz’s 22 years as an American citizen were wasted, a betrayal of his ideals and talent in a vain effort to get rich.