Susan Funkenstein approaches Weimar Culture from an interdisciplinary perspective. Drawing from art history, dance studies, German studies, gender studies, and popular culture studies, her research focuses on images of dance and explores how contentious discourses about gender in a new republic centered on dancing bodies.
Susan's book is out! Marking Modern Movement, Dance and Gender in the Visual Imagery of the Weimar Republic. University of Michigan Press, Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany Series, November 2020.
Bauhaus Bodies: Gender, Sexuality, and Body Culture in Modernism's Legendary Art School, eds. Elizabeth Otto and Patrick Rössler. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019
This essay explores Paul Klee's depictions of dance while at the Bauhaus and how dancers Gret Pal... more This essay explores Paul Klee's depictions of dance while at the Bauhaus and how dancers Gret Palucca and Karla Grosch influenced his making. I argue that events and interactions outside of the Bauhaus' studio environments were of great consequence, for these interactions impacted the developments of artistic styles, Klee's among them. More specifically, Klee's depictions evolved under the influence of women dancers and gymnasts that were especially current in their explorations of gender. These everyday connections around performance -- especially through Palucca and Grosch -- enable us to further re-frame modernism and gender at the Bauhaus with the body at the center of that dialogue.
New German Dance Studies, eds. Susan Manning and Lucia Ruprecht. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012
This essay explores depictions by Bauhaus students and junior faculty of Gret Palucca, a modern d... more This essay explores depictions by Bauhaus students and junior faculty of Gret Palucca, a modern dancer who touted her relationship with the innovative art and design school. Palucca's popularity with the younger generation at the school stemmed from her ability to fulfill a wide range of artistic needs and priorities. Savvy regarding her relationships with these promising and well-connected young artists, she presented a clear dancing style, yet did so in a manner that served as conduits and triggers for the Bauhaus' own aesthetic issues, gender concerns, and relationships with modernity. This essay's focus on the younger Bauhaus generation illuminates the broader interest in Palucca at the Bauhaus and the collaborative interactions she had with people close to her own age. Running against a master narrative approach, in which singular works by well-known senior (and male) artists are emphasized, my approach also recuperates a history of dance at the Bauhaus in which dance functioned as a part of everyday life and as a site for women's creative expression.
This exploration of Wassily Kandinsky's essay "Dance Curves" examines how abstraction is infused ... more This exploration of Wassily Kandinsky's essay "Dance Curves" examines how abstraction is infused with meanings and implications regarding the dancing body at the Bauhaus. Delving into dancer Gret Palucca's relationship with the Bauhaus and Kandinsky's theories of abstraction, I illuminate how abstraction is not gender neutral. Rather, Kandinsky framed Palucca's dancing in ways understood at the time as both feminine and masculine and as part of a larger discourse on gender in the Weimar Republic.
Gender & History. Special Issue: Visual Genders, 2005
Mary Wigman, the most renowned modern dancer in Weimar Germany, not only facilitated an environme... more Mary Wigman, the most renowned modern dancer in Weimar Germany, not only facilitated an environment of mutual respect in the studio and onstage with her female dancers. She asserted herself as a strong female subject in ways that senior male artists, ones with long histories of objectifying women in art, symbiotically connected with her. Expressionists Emil Nolde and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner created a new artistic language for themselves that in many ways negotiated between their own artistic concerns and the theories and practices embedded in Wigman's work. In the process, Nolde, Kirchner, and Wigman provided a model for future artists and subjects seeking to challenge traditional power dynamics.
Focusing on Otto Dix's 1922 painting To Beauty, this article explores how Dix, a German working-c... more Focusing on Otto Dix's 1922 painting To Beauty, this article explores how Dix, a German working-class artist, promoted himself in the work as an Americanized, bourgeois, jazz-loving dancer. In so doing, Dix utilized the painting's composition, symbolism, and cultural context to argue for a masculine, multiracial dominance in the female-associated world of dance. By fundamentally questioning gendered divisions within Weimar dance culture, Dix's example demonstrates how men were seminal participants in dance's vitality. This examination reconceptualizes historical gender alignments in public spheres, and thus envisions new modes of cultural participation in which masculinity, like femininity, changes over time.
Although Otto Dix's painting Portrait of the Dancer Anita Berber has long been interpreted as an ... more Although Otto Dix's painting Portrait of the Dancer Anita Berber has long been interpreted as an expression of the dancer's sensationalism and sexuality, this close look at Berber's performances, films, writings, and publicity appearances suggests a more multifaceted of Berber as a cultural producer. With a range that extended beyond nude dancing, Berber combined aspects of the erotic and the expressionistic in her work, and her theatricality shares much with more recent trends in performance art. Moreover, Dix recognized her complexity as a performer, and his painting, much as it highlights her eroticism, suggests a more profound understanding of her artistic contributions.
Otto Dix's Metropolis (1927-28), a triptych of an upper-class fashionable jazz club flanked by sa... more Otto Dix's Metropolis (1927-28), a triptych of an upper-class fashionable jazz club flanked by sauntering prostitutes, expresses a conflicted fascination with popular culture. Because of the artist's engagement with the mass media, Metropolis reveals his deep personal investment in dance, the centrality of women in a growing Weimar cultural discourse, and how these concerns meshed and clashed with prevalent notions of German identity, heritage, and crisis after World War. Metropolis depicts paradoxical views of international and regional German styles in fashion, female liberation and containment, preoccupation with mass media, Renaissance painting, jubilance and misery.
Bauhaus Bodies: Gender, Sexuality, and Body Culture in Modernism's Legendary Art School, eds. Elizabeth Otto and Patrick Rössler. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019
This essay explores Paul Klee's depictions of dance while at the Bauhaus and how dancers Gret Pal... more This essay explores Paul Klee's depictions of dance while at the Bauhaus and how dancers Gret Palucca and Karla Grosch influenced his making. I argue that events and interactions outside of the Bauhaus' studio environments were of great consequence, for these interactions impacted the developments of artistic styles, Klee's among them. More specifically, Klee's depictions evolved under the influence of women dancers and gymnasts that were especially current in their explorations of gender. These everyday connections around performance -- especially through Palucca and Grosch -- enable us to further re-frame modernism and gender at the Bauhaus with the body at the center of that dialogue.
New German Dance Studies, eds. Susan Manning and Lucia Ruprecht. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012
This essay explores depictions by Bauhaus students and junior faculty of Gret Palucca, a modern d... more This essay explores depictions by Bauhaus students and junior faculty of Gret Palucca, a modern dancer who touted her relationship with the innovative art and design school. Palucca's popularity with the younger generation at the school stemmed from her ability to fulfill a wide range of artistic needs and priorities. Savvy regarding her relationships with these promising and well-connected young artists, she presented a clear dancing style, yet did so in a manner that served as conduits and triggers for the Bauhaus' own aesthetic issues, gender concerns, and relationships with modernity. This essay's focus on the younger Bauhaus generation illuminates the broader interest in Palucca at the Bauhaus and the collaborative interactions she had with people close to her own age. Running against a master narrative approach, in which singular works by well-known senior (and male) artists are emphasized, my approach also recuperates a history of dance at the Bauhaus in which dance functioned as a part of everyday life and as a site for women's creative expression.
This exploration of Wassily Kandinsky's essay "Dance Curves" examines how abstraction is infused ... more This exploration of Wassily Kandinsky's essay "Dance Curves" examines how abstraction is infused with meanings and implications regarding the dancing body at the Bauhaus. Delving into dancer Gret Palucca's relationship with the Bauhaus and Kandinsky's theories of abstraction, I illuminate how abstraction is not gender neutral. Rather, Kandinsky framed Palucca's dancing in ways understood at the time as both feminine and masculine and as part of a larger discourse on gender in the Weimar Republic.
Gender & History. Special Issue: Visual Genders, 2005
Mary Wigman, the most renowned modern dancer in Weimar Germany, not only facilitated an environme... more Mary Wigman, the most renowned modern dancer in Weimar Germany, not only facilitated an environment of mutual respect in the studio and onstage with her female dancers. She asserted herself as a strong female subject in ways that senior male artists, ones with long histories of objectifying women in art, symbiotically connected with her. Expressionists Emil Nolde and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner created a new artistic language for themselves that in many ways negotiated between their own artistic concerns and the theories and practices embedded in Wigman's work. In the process, Nolde, Kirchner, and Wigman provided a model for future artists and subjects seeking to challenge traditional power dynamics.
Focusing on Otto Dix's 1922 painting To Beauty, this article explores how Dix, a German working-c... more Focusing on Otto Dix's 1922 painting To Beauty, this article explores how Dix, a German working-class artist, promoted himself in the work as an Americanized, bourgeois, jazz-loving dancer. In so doing, Dix utilized the painting's composition, symbolism, and cultural context to argue for a masculine, multiracial dominance in the female-associated world of dance. By fundamentally questioning gendered divisions within Weimar dance culture, Dix's example demonstrates how men were seminal participants in dance's vitality. This examination reconceptualizes historical gender alignments in public spheres, and thus envisions new modes of cultural participation in which masculinity, like femininity, changes over time.
Although Otto Dix's painting Portrait of the Dancer Anita Berber has long been interpreted as an ... more Although Otto Dix's painting Portrait of the Dancer Anita Berber has long been interpreted as an expression of the dancer's sensationalism and sexuality, this close look at Berber's performances, films, writings, and publicity appearances suggests a more multifaceted of Berber as a cultural producer. With a range that extended beyond nude dancing, Berber combined aspects of the erotic and the expressionistic in her work, and her theatricality shares much with more recent trends in performance art. Moreover, Dix recognized her complexity as a performer, and his painting, much as it highlights her eroticism, suggests a more profound understanding of her artistic contributions.
Otto Dix's Metropolis (1927-28), a triptych of an upper-class fashionable jazz club flanked by sa... more Otto Dix's Metropolis (1927-28), a triptych of an upper-class fashionable jazz club flanked by sauntering prostitutes, expresses a conflicted fascination with popular culture. Because of the artist's engagement with the mass media, Metropolis reveals his deep personal investment in dance, the centrality of women in a growing Weimar cultural discourse, and how these concerns meshed and clashed with prevalent notions of German identity, heritage, and crisis after World War. Metropolis depicts paradoxical views of international and regional German styles in fashion, female liberation and containment, preoccupation with mass media, Renaissance painting, jubilance and misery.
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For more on the book Bauhaus Bodies:
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/bauhaus-bodies-9781501344787/
For more on the book New German Dance Studies:
https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/59sxb3yg9780252036767.html
For more on the book Bauhaus Bodies:
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/bauhaus-bodies-9781501344787/
For more on the book New German Dance Studies:
https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/59sxb3yg9780252036767.html