John Heartfield

The paper aims to investigate the lecture given by Günther Anders of John Heartfield’s peculiar art of expressionistic montage, in 1938, focusing the connections between aesthetics and politics. The role of the photomontage is, following this text, to put on the surface the reality which is hired under the cover. In this sense, so Anders, Heartfield’s photomontage is a falsification, aimed to reveal the truth. It does not mean a hoax, in order to trick, but rather a way to show the real connections between the things of the world.

Sabine T. Kriebel's Revolutionary Beauty is the most thorough study to date of the Communist photomontage artist John Heartfield's work for the Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (AIZ) in the late 1920s and 1930s. Kriebel analyses Heartfield's production through the frame of 'suture' , a concept she derives from film theory. She argues that Heartfield's work at once stimulated collective solidarity at the same time as it cultivated habits of visual suspicion and active political thinking in ways that may not have always coincided with official Communist aesthetic doctrine. Although Kriebel's approach yields many valuable insights, there is nonetheless a danger that her theory of subject-formation may preclude a more critical understanding of representative politics as a form of mediation.

The essays on Aesthetics of philosopher Günther Anders are still almost unknown; for his part, painter George Grosz' production from the 1930s and during his American exile has been mainly despised by art historians. Both Anders and Grosz considered themselves as holding up an unmerciful mirror to society. The aim of this paper is to offer an analysis on the short but poignant texts which Anders wrote on Grosz' artistic research, providing some of the most vitriolic social criticism of his time. The studies of Anders show unpredicted connections, unveiling in an unprecedented way the deep unity of Grosz' wide oeuvre marked by an absolute pessimism, and therefore particularly near to the philosopher's "negative ontology". Moreover, these texts raise key questions concerning modern art itself which are still central in our time, among others: the political engagement of artists, their relationship with the market, and their clairvoyance, the ethical use of montage practice, and the thin line between life and art.

In this essay, I explore the way in which the Dadaists used photomontage to critique the politics of the Weimar Republic, focusing on John Heartfield and George Grosz's photomontage on the cover of 'Everyone His Own Football', and Hannah Höch's 'Dada Panorama' and 'Heads of State'. In particular, I explore the way in which these artists used elements of femininity and techniques of feminization to accomplish a witty but sharp political critique.

L’IMMAGINE POLITICA DI JOHN HEARTFIELD , BARBARA KRUGER E BANKSY

Ambra Sombo                                                                                                          Anno 2015\2016

Dagli albori dei tempi l’artista è una figura che in un contesto sociale può, attraverso le sue opere  comunicare allo spettatore.
Nelle pagine che seguono verranno affrontati tre artisti: John Heartfield, Barbara Kruger e Banksy.
I fattori che nonostante il diverso contesto socio-culturale riesce comunque ad accomunarli  sono:
la convergenza all’analisi di temi sociali e politici;
il dialogo con le masse instaurato dalle loro opere ognuna con la propria metodologia e sempre determinato da una forte connotazione attivista;
la leggibilità immediata; e soprattutto nel caso di Heartfield e Kruger la funzione diretta che attribuiscono alla parola scritta;
sono agitatori-politici attraverso le loro immagini carica di satira e ironia;
e nel caso di John Heartfields e Banksy una presa di pozione in prima linea anche a costo di mettere a repentaglio la loro incolumità.
Queste sono le caratteristiche  che nonostante le diverse circostanze storiche e i diversi contesti in cui essi sono attivi li accomunano. In questa tesi si andrà ad analizzare l’artista, il contesto e soprattutto la funzione delle loro opere, come comunicatrici.
Per immagine politica in questa tesi s’intende propriamente un arte figurativa che nella sua forma e nel suo contenuto verte sul dato reale, dove si ritrova l’esigenza di fermare lo sguardo sui dati della realtà, che si riscontrano nella situazione socio-politica con cui questi artisti si scontrano. Questi artisti sebbene collocati in spazi temporali diversi, si possono definire attivi,  che producono arte funzionale e che comunicano socialmente, analizzando questioni relativamente controverse (alcune più contemporanee di altre) riscontrate nel loro percorso, utilizzando immagini la cui lettura è quasi immediata e il messaggio insito carico politicamente  .
Come già sommariamente esposto, questi tre artisti propongono un tipo di operazione artistica, che si può racchiudere schematicamente  in quattro fattori determinanti. Propongono un arte che ha come predisposizione, una funzionalità socialmente attivista, questi artisti hanno pregresso una formazione che li porta al contatto con le masse, con le quali, attraverso i loro lavori, cercano di creare una relazione (ideologicamente già costruita), suscitando di conseguenza una riflessione attenta al tema presentatogli.
John Heatfield pubblica settimanalmente dal 1930 al 1938 i suoi fotomontaggi per la rivista “Arbeiter-Ilustrierte- Zeitung; Barbara Kruger utilizzando canali di mass-media come cartelloni pubblicitari e campagne sociali; Banksy attraverso i murales, nel contesto urbano;
L’immediata lettura dell’opera è la chiave fondamentale nell’analisi ed esposizione di questi tre artisti, la recezione del messaggio è spesso sottolineata dall’accostamento dell’immagine accompagnata spesso da un testo  si rimanda quindi  la funzione diretta della parola scritta. Tutti e tre lavorano su messaggi con una componente ironica e\o satirica.
Si può quindi arrivare alla conclusione che attraverso l’utilizzo di satira\ironia e messaggi provocatori questi artisti fungono da comunicatori sociali, si possono definire artisti militanti.
Si può quindi concludere che l’Arte può avere una funzionalità politica e sociale, che dovrebbe essere fonte di riflessioni del contesto storico in cui ci troviamo.
Sia Banksy ,che Barbara Kruger e John Hearfield creano un arte che in parte si presenta come rispecchio del loro contesto, sono riusciti a creare un tipo d’intervento artistico che cerca di essere funzionale in primis nella società.
Nel contesto culturale odierno è bene utilizzare l’Arte come mezzo di comunicazione per affrontare quei temi e quelle argomentazioni su cui è necessario soffermarsi, perché se anche non graditi, sono comunque parte costituente della società contemporanea. L’utilizzo dell’arte per diffondere una maggiore consapevolezza nell’individuo contemporaneo, attraverso quei canali di comunicazione in cui siamo completamente immersi, è un buon esempio da prendere da questi artisti.

The article examines John Heartfield's stay in Czechoslovakia between 1933 and 1938. Circumstances of his flight from Germany are discussed on the basis of archival materials, the reception of his photomontages for Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung is revisited, and his contribution to the Czech book design of the interwar period is stressed.

Why Reality?
'In an era where shock experiences have become the norm of city life, Benjamin refers to montage as the strategy that fit the mission of the medium best, in this vein, he prefers constructed reality over the plain realism that photography is usually expected to provide, and he argues that details of structures are more suited to the camera than 'soulful portraits'.  Henry Bond, 2013
Social Reality in this essay is a term used to describe Marxist notions of truth, presented via visual means. Reality, fidelity to truth, empowerment and propaganda are the mainstays of these discussions and this collection of writing will try to mediate political bias and bourgeois subjectivity to present a well argued and considered response to the question: How best do we depict a true Social Reality to the proletariat of Weimar Germany?
As any historian knows most sources are heavily biased, and as Plato and many after him have argued perception of truth is an entirely subjective experience.
Looking briefly to Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’, about a cave where prisoners are kept from birth in a state of disempowerment. All day and night shadows on the wall of their prison are cast from the light of the sun and a fire and all they know are these projections of ‘reality’: life outside the cave is simplified to shadows on the wall. They take the shadows for truth, and understand the world through this mode. Here Plato mocks the ignorance of unquestioning society, the people of the cave represent people who believe they can know the world merely through what they see and hear.

In the part two of the play Plato examines the small societies’ quest for knowledge (or lack thereof): ‘Socrates: And if someone even forced him to look into the glare of the fire, would his eyes not hurt him, and would he not then turn away and flee [back] to that which he is capable of looking at?’  What he was saying here is that, as with water, the masses tend to take the path of least resistance and seek comfort in their false but ‘known’ world.
One prisoner escapes and comes to know the truth of the world, they learn the way of the sun, and of the true forms through a campaign of curiosity and returns to the cave to liberate the others. This character is representative of philosophy: ‘Socrates: And now, I responded, consider this: If this person who had gotten out of the cave were to go back down again and sit in the same place as before, would he not find in that case, coming suddenly out of the sunlight, that his eyes were filled with darkness?  Glaucon: Yes, very much so.‘  The homecoming results in the escapee being seen as quite ludicrous, their eyes flushed with the light they cannot continue to take pleasure in merely knowing simple forms.
It is my proposition that photomontage, the amalgamation of many images to form a new meaning, or the combination of image and text, are the modes of art making best suited to illuminating the cave and liberating its people in the face of an abstract but powerful dark propagandistic force of first the German state at war and then the fascist National Socialist party.  Photomontage, in its unique position as a medium which collects ‘empirical’ materials from the state presses and reorganises them to unveil an enlightened realism de-establishes propagandist notions and then uses them as a weapon is a transcendent and pithy reaction to the issues presented by technology and power.
'In essence Lukács conceived realism as a given form, one that was at odds with all varieties of Modernism... Only a 'true' realism, based on example of the great realists of the past, could penetrate the contradictions of modern capitalism... Brecht on the other hand, though agreeing that realism was the key issue for modern art, and agreeing too that Marxism provided the basis of an adequate approach to the problem, argued that it was not so much an achieved form as something that had to be won and re-won in new conditions.’ Paul Wood, 1993
This collection of essays intend to examine the notion of empirical reality through an exploration of the history of photography, and the mediums complicated possession of power to illicit largely un-querying belief from the viewer despite a contentious history regarding manipulation and montage. This defence of photomontage, as a vanguard of truth, will be explored in relation to the Communist Party’s artist groups and also in relation to acclaimed Marxist philosophers Bertolt Brecht, Georg Lukács and Walter Benjamin. The rich dialogue between these esteemed thinkers is (thankfully) well recorded and they provide an inquisitive discourse on the nature of truth, reality and class empowerment. They all ruminated extensively upon truth, seeking a demonstration of reality that is both suitable for and sufficiently inspirational or exposing of a dark truth to work as a mobilising force for the proletariat.  As this exploration draws to a close it will question the distinct power that technology possessed in relation to both deconstructing art and democratising in a conversation with Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.
These questions will hopefully compliment and convince the reader of my proposition that in Weimar Germany photomontage was the most powerful truth-seeking medium. In turn this conclusion will then hopefully provide some answers on how to seek reality today…

"Rosanna Gangemi dedica una profonda analisi alla pratica del fotomontaggio di John Heartfield, fondata sull’idea che il principio della composizione classica, basata sul pezzo isolato, restituisce l'immagine univoca di un mondo perfetto, mentre quella dell'assemblaggio di parti eterogenee, a priori incompatibili, rivela le contraddizioni dell'esistente. Nel 1938 il filosofo Günther Anders dedica ai fotomontaggi di Heartfield un testo poco conosciuto, Sul fotomontaggio: il saggio di Rosanna Gangemi si propone principalmente di dare conto della lettura originale che Anders fa dei fotocollage militanti di Heartfield, definiti come veri e propri giudizi sul mondo. Sono scandagliati gli argomenti che fanno emergere ciò che vi è di profondamente nuovo nella sua pratica: le modalità di enunciazione che promuove, il ruolo che assegna al destinatario e il posto, necessariamente ambivalente, nel mondo dell'arte, fino al processo di concezione e diffusione frutto di certe dinamiche creative collettive, in particolare il contributo del fratello, Wieland Herzfelde, a cui si devono molti degli enunciati verbali che striano i pamphlet visivi di Heartifield."

Alle dure condizioni di vita materiali e morali dei cittadini della Germania Est si contrapponeva un mondo idealizzato, quello divulgato dalla propaganda di regime, nel quale il paese, seguendo i dogmi (spacciati per infallibili) dell’ideologia comunista e la guida (ovviamente illuminata) del partito unico, eccelleva in ogni sua espressione, dall’economia alla giustizia sociale allo sport. Per quarant’anni realtà e immaginazione hanno convissuto ignorandosi, come due narrazioni parallele e autolegittimanti.
Questo percorso iconografico mostra forme e modi attraverso cui le autorità della Germania Est hanno diffuso ad arte una visione del mondo platealmente mendace e a senso unico.

“Simulanten des Irrsinns auf dem Vortragspult”: Dada, War and Psychiatry – ‘Active Dynamics of Trauma’. This paper relates stage performances of dada artists to war neurosis and shell shock as sociocultural phenomena. The leitmotif of this investigation is the notion of simulation, as dada artists were referred to as malingerers (simulators) of madness by the press at the time. I hypothesize that the performers imitate/simulate with drums, shouting and ‘bruitist’ sound poems, the noises of war, staging themselves as war neurotics in a kind of shocking clinical demonstration. Both discourses intersect in the fact that many dadaists try to dodge the draft by simulating madness. The scandalizing anti-art of dada will be understood as contagious anti-pedagogy, trying to vaccinate against the madness of the era.

Kimi sanat anlayislari, ideolojik akimlarin bir uzantisi olarak ortaya cikmaktadir. Kimi ideolojik yaklasimlar ise sanat akimlarindan etkilenmektedir. Sosyalist gercekcilik, sosyalizmin bir ideoloji olarak etkin olmaya basladigi donemde, gercekciligin imkanlarini kullanarak ortaya cikan bir sanat anlayisidir. Bu calismada ilk kez bir devlet yonetimi tarafindan benimsenen sanat anlayisi olan toplumsal gercekciligin fotograf sanatina yansimalari incelenmektedir. Bu incelemede, donemin ve sosyalizmin en onemli yayinlarindan biri olan Resimli Isci Dergisi’nin (AIZ) yayincilik ve fotograf kullanilarak gerceklestirilen tasarim anlayislari degerlendirilmektedir.

Apart from Eduard Fuchs, there has been little Marxist scholarship on caricature and satire. This is a glaring omission, especially in light of the work of John Heartfield, whose photomontages were viewed across the political spectrum as well as across class boundaries. To discover how Heartfield’s photomontages interpellate their subject as a politically engaged viewer, this article investigates the mechanisms by which satire addresses its audience, how it communicates its message, and to what degree we might judge its effectiveness as a means of persuasion. A Benjaminian analysis of the Verfremdungseffekt produced by montage, the alienating distanciation of unexpected juxtapositions, contributes to the construction of a true dialectical image of satire, which allows us to plot the oppositional axes of satire and to extrapolate the characteristics of other forms of mass persuasion such as state propaganda. In this way we can trace how mass persuasion results in political action.

The core focus of this study is to analyze, from a different viewpoint, how effective photography is as an instrument for the formation of image and the transformation of meaning. Based on the idea that within his visual transmissions, the modern artist will serve as an important model for the formation of a message through image and expression, and the visualization of an expression through image, the study draws attention to the importance photography has gained in mass media thanks to the technological progress it went through in 1920s. In line with the purpose, the study discusses an original work by John Heartfield, a founder member of Berlin Dada Group, through which he totally visualizes his subjective discourse; it refers to texts that intrinsically contain 'story within a story' as well as a semiotic approach; and in this way, sometimes it associates the work with the concept of 'intertextuality'and at other times refers to the concept of 'intersemiotics' through the work. In order to design a model that moves from the surface to the depth, an attempt is made to attain the meaning of images at a semiotic level through description, analysis and interpretation on the basis of the iconological method, defined by Erwin Panofsky as 'the identification and classification of images'. Özet Bu çalışmanın odak noktasında, modern sanatçının görsel aktarımlarında imgenin söz ile birlikte bir ileti oluşturması ya da imgenin bir söylemi görselleştirmesine önemli bir örnekçe olacağı düşüncesiyle, fotoğrafçılığın 1920'li yıllarda geçirdiği teknolojideki gelişmeler sayesinde kitle iletişiminde ulaşmış bulunduğu önemine de dikkat çekerek, fotoğrafın, imgenin oluşumu ve anlamı dönüştürmekte ne kadar etkin bir araç olduğunu farklı bir bakışla inceleme amacı bulunmaktadır. Bu amaçla, Berlin Dada Gurubu'nun kurucu üyelerinden olan John Heartfield'ın tamamen kendi öznel söylemini görselleştirdiği özgün bir yapıtı ele alınmış; göstergebilimsel bakış açısının yanı sıra özünde 'anlatı içinde anlatı' barındıran metinlere atıfta bulunarak yapıt kimi yerde 'metinlerarasılık 'kavramıyla ilişkilendirilmiş, kimi yerde ise yapıt aracılığıyla 'göstergelerarasılık' kavramına göndermede bulunulmuştur. Yüzeyden derin yapıya inen bir örnekçe tasarlamak adına yeri geldiğindeyse Erwin Panofsky'nin " imgelerin tanımlanması ve sınıflanması " olarak yorumladığı ikonolojik yönteminden esinle; betimleyerek, çözümleyerek ve ardından yorumlayarak, imgelerin göstergebilimsel anlam boyutuna ulaşılmaya çalışılmıştır. Anahtar Kelimeler: John Heartfield, fotomontaj, anlambilim, görsel göstergebilim, metinlerarasılık, göstergelerarasılık, Erwin Panofsky, ikonoloji ve ikonografi.

Le « Poméranien robuste et non sentimental » George Grosz (1893-1959), peintre et dessinateur, et Günther Anders (1902-1992), le philosophe de la catastrophe et auteur, font connaissance tout en « se reconnaissant » à l’instant. Avec un destin commun de rescapés de l’Allemagne nazie et une inclinaison à la révolte, ils partageaient entre autres un changement de nom, un talent prémonitoire, l’ivresse intellectuelle de la provocation, la méthode de l’exagération, un scepticisme envers l’homme ainsi qu’un sentiment aigu de la responsabilité envers les choses du monde, qui devait être pour eux l’ambition ultime de toute œuvre, et qui le fut de leur propre vie. Nous n’avons donc pas de difficulté à imaginer qu’Anders vit en Grosz, telle une allégorie vivante, l’incarnation de sa conception morale de l’Artiste.
Le court essai - sur lequel l’histoire de l’art, l’histoire culturelle et la philosophie de l’art se sont encore très peu penchés -, qu’Anders consacre à Grosz et aux quatre grands moments qu’il repère dans sa pratique, aborde latéralement certaines questions fondamentales de l’art du XXe siècle : du côté de l’œuvre, la quête du vrai, la clairvoyance, le rôle des avant-gardes, le parti pris et les défis de la figuration dans le discours poético-politique, la « transsubstantiation » du sujet (cible) en image (arme) ; du côté de l’artiste, la rage comme pulsion créative, l’art comme possibilité de survivance existentielle, la relation avec le pouvoir politique et marchand, la reconnaissance institutionnelle, les formes de sociabilité artistique, la quasi complète surimpression entre l’art et la vie. Dans les deux perspectives demeurant, au fond, l’exigence de la liberté d’expression à tout prix, jusqu’à courir le risque de la disparition (de l’œuvre, voire de l’artiste).

Kimi sanat anlayışları, ideolojik akımların bir uzantısı olarak ortaya çıkmaktadır. Kimi ideolojik yaklaşımlar ise sanat akımlarından etkilenmektedir. Sosyalist gerçekçilik, sosyalizmin bir ideoloji olarak etkin olmaya başladığı dönemde, gerçekçiliğin imkânlarını kullanarak ortaya çıkan bir sanat anlayışıdır. Bu çalışmada ilk kez bir devlet yönetimi tarafından benimsenen sanat anlayışı olan toplumsal gerçekçiliğin fotoğraf sanatına yansımaları tartışılmaktadır. Bu incelemede, dönemin ve sosyalizmin en önemli yayınlarından biri olan Resimli İşçi Dergisi’nin (AIZ) John Heartfield tarafından yapılan kapak tasarımları incelenmektedir.

The title of this essay, which was written for a book about the Peace Press published by The Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles, comes from an awkward discovery by Josh MacPhee and the late Dara Greenwald in 2008. While researching materials for an exhibition they were curating about social movement art for Exit Art (NYC not-for-profit gallery now closed) they came across a post-it note "not cool enough to catalog" attached to posters in the PAD/D Archive at the Museum of Modern Art. Using this anecdote as a jumping-off point this essay attempts to invert the usual way such movement culture is discussed by suggesting that well-known artists such as Andy Warhol or Richard Serra drew upon an ethereal body of fugitive posters, radical Left imagery and political graphic visual tropes that constitute a "phantom archive" informing both "professional" and informal art works when it comes to making a "statement."  [From: Kaplan, Ilee, et al. Peace Press Graphics 1967-1987: Art in the Pursuit of Social Change. University Art Museum, California State University, 2011. ]

The Chatter of the Visible examines the paradoxical narrative features of the montage aesthetics of artists associated with Dada, Constructivism, and the New Objectivity. While montage strategies have commonly been associated with the purposeful interruption of and challenge to narrative consistency and continuity, this study offers an historicized reappraisal of 1920s and 1930s German photo montage work to show that its peculiar mimicry was less a rejection of narrative and more an extension or permutation of it—a means for thinking in narrative textures exceeding constraints imposed by “flat” print media (especially the novel and other literary genres). -

See more at: https://www.press.umich.edu/8814831/chatter_of_the_visible#sthash.VSa4LyJ8.dpuf

Book talk for Chats in the Stacks, Cornell University Library:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qllhJPz61EM

La journée d’études doctorale « Fragmentations » porte sur la transcription, dans les arts, d’une expérience renouvelée du réel. À partir du XIXe siècle, au moment où se développent les « machines à voir » telles que le kaléidoscope ou phénakistiscope et les nouveaux moyens de locomotion que sont la voiture et le train, un autre mode de perception se définit : la technique réduit les distances et parcellise la vision. Au XXe siècle, la prise d’importance exponentielle des médias de masse au travers de la télévision et des magazines, ainsi que les nouveaux outils de communication avec le téléphone et les réseaux sociaux, modifient significativement le rapport de l’être humain aux images. Conséquence des nouveaux usages technologiques, la représentation du monde se façonne, dans la seconde moitié du siècle, à travers un assemblage simultané et profondément hétérogène. Aujourd’hui, la multiplication des écrans, les pratiques de zapping, de scrolling et la juxtaposition d’éléments parfois sans lien, ainsi que l’accès instantané à l’information, deviennent autant d’obstacles à une expérience perceptive unifiée et continue, et imposent la nécessité d’une nouvelle écologie de la concentration.

In this article, the practice of photomontage is presented as a revolutionary agent capable of reconfiguring real events and creating new narratives based on political interests. To this end, two different approaches to the role of photomontage are presented, both carried out in a context where the political scenario was undergoing deep restructuring. In the first case, described through an analysis of a set of works by John Heartfield, the photomontage is characterised by a discourse of opposition to a rising fascist political regime in Germany, revealing this practice as a potential medium to propose a rereading of real events and to appeal to the critical sense of the public. In this context we can say that photomontage acts as an (anti)political weapon. In the second case, described through the analysis of a set of works by authors such as Klutsis or El Lissitzky, photomontage is characterised by a discourse in accordance with a new political era taking place in the Soviet Union in the sequence of the October Revolution.

From a semiotic point of view, photography is still considered a different kind of sign. Then, how can imagetext works be studied, formed by photography and word? This article argues that fictional texts expose the semiotic nature of photographs, showing that photographs are signs, different from their referents. The fictional, intermedial texts studied here are John Heartfield's, Bertolt Brecht's, and W.G. Sebald's: three authors linked by German history. In the light of Umberto Eco's semiotics, photographs can also be considered metaphors, enable to provide a new kind of iconicity and to overcome their realistic weight.

Desde un punto de vista semiótico, la fotografía todavía se considera un tipo diferente de signo. Entonces, ¿cómo se pueden estudiar las obras de imagen y texto formadas por fotografía y palabra? Este artículo sostiene que los textos de ficción exponen la naturaleza semiótica de las fotografías, mostrando que las fotografías son signos que difieren de sus referentes. Los textos de ficción e intermediales aquí estudiados son los de John Heartfield, Bertolt Brecht y W.G. Sebald: tres autores vinculados por la historia de Alemania. A la luz de la semiótica de Umberto Eco, las fotografías también pueden considerarse metáforas, capaces de aportar un nuevo tipo de iconicidad y superar su peso realista.

Is montage, as practiced by John Heartfield, still relevant today? Contribution to online symposium in connection with exhibition, "John Heartfield: Photography Plus Dynamite," Akademie der Künste, Berlin, summer 2020.  More texts, responses, videos, here:
https://www.adk.de/en/projects/2020/heartfield/programme/symposium/Panel-1_en.htm

John Heartfield’s photomontages for the A.-I.-Z. (Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung),  245 works published between 1930 and 1938, address us as reasonable, humane readers of the newspaper and committed Communists, reliably opposed to a broad spectrum of unjust, inhumane, less-than-Communist socialists and fascists. They show us how the world could look from just a bit beyond, outside the newspaper, from a place where it is possible to see and reflect on people reading, to see texts within a larger frame, to think text, photograph, sound independently and together. But by seeming to step outside the historical condition of the newspaper, by appearing to “play” with moving images and
sound as well as texts and photographs, to invent a version of the world that made more sense than the news itself, he seemed to give his audience a superior insight in the contemporary world. What made comrades different from cabbageheads was, if briefly, a capacity to think media.

« Les mauvais craignent ta griffe / les bons se réjouissent de ta grâce / c’est ce que j’aimais entendre de mon verset. » . Ces ainsi que Bertolt Brecht, accompagnant son recueil de cent poèmes, chanta les louanges de l’auteur de sa couverture : l’artiste John Heartfield (1891-1968), un des plus novateurs troubleurs de perceptions que le XXe siècle connut, dont l’art eut un caractère éminemment opératoire, destiné à la lutte des classes.
Heartfield signera affiches, illustrations, mises en page de périodiques, décors de théâtre : son influence, dépassant les limites du dadaïsme, s’étendra dans plusieurs sphères de l’art, tout en offrant une réponse dans le domaine des arts visuels aux thèses de Benjamin, pour qui une conviction révolutionnaire ne fait pas l’artiste révolutionnaire si ses formes de production ne se confrontent pas avec l’actualité technologique . Dans le contexte d’une scène artistique allemande traversée par un large courant de réalisme social, ce sont les images de Heartfield, raffinées, satiriques, déconcertantes, à insuffler la grande inventivité régnant dans le domaine des arts graphiques appliqués lors des premières décennies du dernier siècle.
Günther Anders (1902-1992) lui dédiera le peu connu « Sur le photomontage » . Si le point de départ du philosophe est que « le matérialiste progressiste » ne compte pas sur le témoignage de l’œil humain, mais a recours à la dialectique afin de rassembler les morceaux visibles isolés, « car n’est visible que ce qui est isolé », il défend également la condition « majeure » de cet art, en démonte les mécanismes de fabrication et en souligne le pouvoir de subversion et d’alerte.
Le montage est un rapport qui prévaut sur les termes qu’il met en rapport, produisant une tension entre figuration et défiguration. Si « au feu d’une autre, une chose s’éclaire » (Lucrèce), Heartfield démonte et remonte des images hétérogènes, à priori incompatibles, pour faire surgir les contradictions de l’existant restées dans les plis de l’image documentaire. « Il invente pour démontrer » : pour Anders, les images combinées de Heartfield sont des jugements qui remettent les arts plastiques en rapport avec la question de la véridicité. Voilà pourquoi ses œuvres se composent souvent de deux moitiés distinctes : l’une est la face publique, l’autre la face cachée. C’est le cas du montage autour de la déclaration d’Hitler selon laquelle il serait socialiste afin d’attirer les masses des travailleurs. Cette œuvre présente un double montage car, en montrant Göbbels en train de monter la barbe de Marx sur le Führer , il révèle le montage de l’ennemi et produit donc un « contre-montage ».
De plus, les incises striant les figures sont des compléments essentiels de ses œuvres : sous le signe de l’invention combinatoire de l’« ingénieur » Heartfield, supporté par son frère Wieland Herzfelde - la véritable poésie d’agitation déployée par les titres, les textes d’accompagnement et les sous-titres des images, c’est surtout sa contribution -, ses montages photographiques sont rendus « lisibles » par un usage averti de la typographie, en pleine résonance avec d’autres expériences voisines comme les « photo-épigrammes » de Brecht .
Nous espérons pouvoir témoigner des arguments qui font surgir ce qu’il y a de profondément nouveau dans la pratique de l’artiste : les modalités d’énonciation qu’elle promeut, le processus de création ainsi que le rôle qu’elle assigne au destinataire, jusqu’à sa place, nécessairement ambivalente, dans le monde de l’art. À cet égard, nous devons tenir en compte, nous avertit Anders, que les images de Heartfield n’ont pas été pensées pour finir accrochées, exposées pour leur prétendue « originalité », mais pour être reproduites afin de rejoindre les masses, suivant les chemins de la transmédialité, la dissémination, l’action contextuelle. Par conséquent, sur les murs, nous n’exposerons certes pas des originaux, mais l’avant-dernière phase de leur achèvement.
En conclusion, nous souhaiterions intégrer la lecture de l’œuvre de Heartfield qui en fait Anders avec d’autres lectures, premièrement Louis Aragon et John Berger, tout en essayant de situer ce corpus dans le contexte artistique et socio-politique de l’Europe de la première moitié du XXe siècle et, en particulier, dans le bouillonnant Berlin de l’entre-deux-guerres.

Colloque international Le Phototexte engagé, du militantisme aux luttes de visibilité
Jeudi 31 mai - vendredi 1er juin 2018
9h – 17h30
Auditorium - Maison des Sciences Humaines Paris Nord
93210 Saint-Denis
France

Mein Vortrag ist dazu gezielt, die Verbindungen zwischen Aesthetik und Politik in G. Anders Lekture von John Heartfield’ künstliches Werk zu betrachten. Anders’Bemerkungen über Photomontage rufen mehrere Themen im Plan: die Rolle des Auges (worüber Anders viel geschrieben hat, in Nachlass), die Beziehungen zwischen dem Sichtbaren und dem Unsichtbare.
Mit seiner Werke hebt Heartfield die Unsichtbarkeit der Realität, sowie die Unzulänglichkeit der menschichen Auge auf, indem er versucht “etwas” zu enthüllen, was unter die Oberflächigkeit steht: eine unerreichbare Bedeutungsnetz. Von hier ab versteht man besser die Rolle der photografischen Montage, die Zusammenhänge, der Grund oder Hintergrund der Erscheinungen auftauchen lasst. Es behandelt sich nicht um  das Unbekannte, sondern um das Bekannte (wie Musil in dem Text Triedere erklärt), um den unter den ruhigen Schein liegenden Spiel.  Im Einklang mit Kurt Tucholsky, Anders versteht/siest Herartfield’Kunst als eine Wahrheitsübertreibung, oder besser als eine Fiktion die paradoxerweise die Wahrheit produziert (statt die zu reproduzieren). Von diesem Standpunkt ist es sehr interessant, dass die Photomontage als Kunstform gerade in dem ersten Weltkrieg erfunden wurde.  Gerade am Front hat eine sekülare Sehensweise ihre Antiquiertheit enthüllt hat, indem sie sich in einem vielseitigen und zerstreutenden Blick verwandelt ist, der sich nur durch  einem Zertrümmernmontage einlassen kann. Im frappanten Unterschied mit Döblin, der die Angst des Menschen vor den  Dingen-nebeneinadersetzungen im Werk setzt (aufstellt), versucht Anders die (Un)verwandschaften,  und das auch um den Preis der Deformation. Eine Kunst, die auf die Schönheit verzichtet hat, eine umgeformte Kunst, die aber den Blick von sich und in Richtung der Wahrheit weist, insoweit sie sich als Zeugnis geben will (hier steht auch die Verbindung mit der Ästhetik von Adorno). Eine Kunst die auch auf die Aura verzichet hat, um sich zur Verfügung der Reproduzierbarkeit zu  stellen. Aber merken Sie: wie Anders betont, die Deformation der Kunst von Heartfield hat nicht mit einer politischen Verfälschung (wie in der italienischen Faszismus). Sie ist an der Antipole, insoweit sie nicht lobzupreisen existiert, sonder um die “falsche  Verfälschungen” zu demaskieren, d.h. um “die Wahrheit zu bauen”.

The German artist John Heartfield (1891-1968), was a prominent twentieth century political artist and one of the pioneers of modern photomontage, or photoshopping, as it is better known today. This study analyzes “Metamorphosis” (“Metamorphose” in its German origin), one of John Heartfield’s best known photomontages. This study employs the tools of semiotic analysis, interspersed with figures and aims to present a plural reading by making appropriate intertextual and intersemiotic connections. Within this framework, imagery, symbols and allegories will be analyzed to expose the work’s metaphorical structure, and then an interpretation will be made with reference to the cultural codes of the artist and the work.

Apart from Eduard Fuchs, there has been little Marxist scholarship on caricature and satire. This is a glaring omission, especially in light of the work of John Heartfield, whose photomontages were viewed across the political spectrum as well as across class boundaries. To discover how Heartfield’s photomontages interpellate their subject as a politically engaged viewer, this article investigates the mechanisms by which satire addresses its audience, how it communicates its message, and to what degree we might judge its effectiveness as a means of persuasion. A Benjaminian analysis of the Verfremdungseffekt produced by montage, the alienating distanciation of unexpected juxtapositions, contributes to the construction of a true dialectical image of satire, which allows us to plot the oppositional axes of satire and to extrapolate the characteristics of other forms of mass persuasion such as state propaganda. In this way we can trace how mass persuasion results in political action.

Au cours de l’année 1935 Marianne publie une série d’articles d’André Beucler consacrée à La vie d’Adolf Hitler. Deux ans plus tard, paraîtra une version enrichie qui prend forme de livre et qui s’intitule L’Ascension d’Hitler. Du village autrichien au coup d’État de Munich. Beucler, après avoir passé quatre ans en Allemagne, rentre à Paris en 1934, étant « devenu indésirable » (Curatolo : 25) après la prise de pouvoir par les nazis. C’est notamment lors de ce séjour, en 1931, qu’il rencontre Hitler dont il donne la biographie, « enrichie d’une narration romanesque » (Richard : 18). Les articles de Marianne, tout comme le livre, sont accompagnés de plusieurs photos montrant Hitler parfois souriant ou enfant, ou encore dans sa posture de dictateur, ce qui donne une perspective graphique supplémentaire au narratif. Ce que nous proposons dans cette étude, c’est de montrer en premier lieu la dimension historique dans l’œuvre d’André Beucler, qui dès l’avènement du nazisme ne cesse d’alerter contre le danger de l’idéologie fasciste, contre l’antisémitisme, contre cette mentalité de ceux qui étaient dérangés de « l’encombrement israélite » (Beucler, Ascension d’Hitler : 185). Deuxièmement, nous voudrions faire le lien entre la représentation documentaire, historique et fictionnelle qui passe souvent par la voie de l’affiche, de l’enseigne, de la pancarte. L’omniprésence des « brochures hitlériennes » (24), des affiches, des enseignes électorales et officielles font entrevoir la portée de l’éducation idéologique latente qui devient une arme aux mains du dictateur : « D’autres soirs, le candidat malheureux à l’École des Beaux-Arts de Vienne s’attaquait aux enseignes, étendards et bannières de ses futures troupes » (177) et sur « un morceau de papier rouge, rouge comme les affiches » (177), mais aussi « rouge comme le sang », le dictateur dessine la croix gammée. La biographie romancée de Beucler montre dans quelle mesure les simples « affiches rouges » se métamorphosent en fin de compte en « drapeau », en étendard qui devient le pilier autour duquel se construit l’idéologie fasciste. C’est également à travers l’insertion de l’affiche-caricature de John Heartfield « Histoire naturelle allemande. Ebert. Hindenburg. Hitler » au sein de son article sur Hitler (Marianne, 22 mai 1935) que Beucler arrive à introduire d’une part l’histoire et de lui opposer, d’autre part, une sorte de contre-histoire ou contre-affiche. Cette image de Heartfield, qui construit souvent ses photomontages en utilisant les affiches électorales de Hitler dans le but d’une revendication critique, semble jouer un double sens dans la narration beuclerienne. La fonction des « affiches lacérées et [d]es inscriptions lapidaires » (Beucler, La fleur qui chante : 140) renvoie, dans la fiction de l’écrivain, à une identique représentation historique ou documentaire qui font appel aux slogans, aux « phrases aiguës » liées au politique, mais aussi et surtout à « l’homogénéité absolue de la langue » et à « l’uniformité de la parole » (Klemperer : 36).

...Ernst Friedrichs 1924 veröffentlichter Bildband „Krieg dem Kriege“ und sein Anti-Kriegs-Museum verhalfen einer zunehmend pazifistisch geprägten Sicht zu größerer Aufmerksamkeit. Otto Dix widmete 1924 dem Krieg einen Grafikzyklus mit insgesamt fünfzig Blättern, der wie Friedrichs Bildband die gewaltsamen Deformationen von Mensch (Leib und Physiognomie) und Natur (Landschaft) drastisch zur Darstellung brachte. Diese Form des Realismus  stand aber in scharfem Kontrast zu den offiziellen Kriegschroniken und den verherrlichenden Verlautbarungen der Kriegsbefürworter.  In Zeitschriften wie: „Die Aktion“ und „Die Weltbühne“ sowie Werken der Antikriegs-Literatur wie Ludwig Renns „Krieg“ (1928) oder Erich Maria Remarques „Im Westen nichts Neues“ (1929) formierte sich eine politisch engagierte Gegenöffentlichkeit. ...

The text discusses inclusion and social engagement in art, which are central to my practice. My projects operate at the interface between dialogical education and participatory as well as collective art making. By referring to Kester's critique of New Labour policies of the late 1990s as leading to a de-radicalized Marxism I argue for an agonistic method that I connect with the idea of 'radical inclusion' as a strategic approach to democratization. The problem of Austrian history politics and how the country created the myth of Austria as the first victim of Nazi Germany is the main focus of my intervention at the Peace Cross St. Lorenz in Lower Austria, which serves as an example of my artistic practice of 'radical inclusion'. The peace cross exists since the 1960s and is celebrating the Jockisch task force. Contemporary historical research has revealed that this combat group was actively involved in war crimes during the Second World War. To counter the myth of an innocent Wehrmacht I mounted in front of the cross a photomontage made in 1933 by the antifascist artist John Heartfield. Additionally, the memorial is augmented by five signboards which present collages produced by local school pupils during a workshop that took place over a period of six months.