Körperkultur. Body culture in Germany and USSR, 1910 – 1930-s
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Körperkultur. Body culture in Germany and USSR, 1910 – 1930-s In Germany in 1910-1930’s we see an explosion of body culture, mostly of naked body (Nacktkultur). Books and brochures devoted to the beauty of the body, accompanied by pictures of naked women and men performing solo dance, choral mass movement or various gymnastic exercises were published in large editions. This period is connected with the activity of many outstanding experimentalists in the field of gymnastics, rhythm plastic and modern dance as well as with active study of fixation of motion in painting and mainly in photography.
Rudolph Laban, one of the founders of the free dance, considered the dance as an abstract system, transcendental cosmic force that permeates all with the rhythm and intensity. Rejecting memorized movements, musical accompaniment, themes and plot, the body must seek their own rhythms, expanding its aesthetic experience beyond the rational. Most clearly and concisely this image embodied in the figures of nude dancers by Ferdinand Preiss named «Ecstasy».
In USSR similar searches in the sphere of rhythm and plastique first of all concerned with the work of choreology laboratory of Academy of Arts, founded in 1923. Kandinsky believed that movement is a part of the “synthetic art”, idea of what he developed together with the dancer and choreographer Alexander Sakharov, painter Alexei Jawlensky and composer Thomas von Hartmann. In one of the studies Kandinsky wrote about the necessity to establish a link between the movement of the lines and movement of the human body, convert the line in body movement and body movement in line. In 1920s he created a series of analytical drawings based on Gret Palucca photos. In these drawings the movement was transmitted by schematic linear systems.
Free dance expressed subjective inner emotions and therefore became the most striking embodiment of the spirit of individuality. Physical culture, on contrary, presented the idea of “objective” body and boring quantitative assessment of physical strength and health. These two sides – subjective and objective, individual and social – determined “body culture” in the 1920s. Not surprisingly that later, when period of relative freedom in Germany and USSR has ended, authorities resolutely refused from “individual” and all discoveries in the field of art of movement began to be used only for the choreography of mass celebrations and athletic parades.
Free dance expressed subjective inner emotions and therefore became the most striking embodiment of the spirit of individuality. Physical culture, on contrary, presented the idea of “objective” body and boring quantitative assessment of physical strength and health. These two sides – subjective and objective, individual and social – determined “body culture” in the 1920s. Not surprisingly that later, when period of relative freedom in Germany and USSR has ended, authorities resolutely refused from “individual” and all discoveries in the field of art of movement began to be used only for the choreography of mass celebrations and athletic parades.
The main part of exhibition is Ferdinand Preiss sculptures, which are on display for the first time, paintings by Nikolai Zagrekov, Russian-German artist, pupil of II Mashkov and PP Konchalovsky, who emigrated in Berlin in early 1920s and stayed there forever.
Paintings and sculptures in the exhibition space supplemented by video and photo documentary, including rare photos of Meyerhold biomechanic lessons from the collection of State Theatre museum named after Bakhrushin.