Cafe Culture: Art and Society in Early 20th Century Austria and Germany

2006-09-19 until 2006-11-25
Galerie St. Etienne
New York, NY, USA United States of America

The Galerie St. Etienne opens the fall season with an exhibition exploring the impact of the caf� on the development of the visual arts in fin-de-si�cle Austria and Weimar-era Germany. CAF� CULTURE: Art & Society in Early 20th Century Austria and Germany, scheduled to run from September 19 though November 25, will feature artifacts relating specifically to caf�s (such as furniture, posters and artists� depictions of the caf� and cabaret milieu), as well as works more loosely documenting the creative interchanges that this institution inspired. Among the artists to be included are Max Beckmann, George Grosz, Erich Heckel, Josef Hoffmann, E.L. Kirchner, Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, Adolf Loos, Jeanne Mammen, Emil Nolde, Hermann Max Pechstein, Christian Schad, Egon Schiele and Bruno Voigt.

The caf� and its nighttime counterpart, the cabaret, were meeting grounds for all members of society in early twentieth century Austria and Germany, fermenting artistic movements and influencing artists� subject matter. The cross-fertilization that existed among figures in various disciplines, all of whom rubbed shoulders at the leading coffeehouses, contributed in many ways to the rapid and simultaneous emergence of avant-garde movements in art, literature and music. So august were the personages who frequented the leading coffeehouses that no fewer than three were known by the nickname �Caf� Megalomania�: the Caf� Griensteidl in Vienna, the Caf� des Westens in Berlin and the Caf� Stefanie in Munich. It was here that the Secession movements in each of these cities gained impetus, cementing artistic alliances while at the same time sowing the seeds of future rivalries. The German variant of Art Nouveau, Jugendstil, was based in Munich, where contributors to the popular journals Jugend and Simplicissimus gathered at the Stefanie and other coffeehouses in the Bohemian Schwabing district. The Viennese Caf�haus �home away from home, office, letter drop and lending library�was the birthplace of the Jung Wien (Young Vienna) literary movement and the nexus for artistic factions that included both the elegant architect Josef Hoffmann (co-founder of the Wiener Werkst�tte) and his arch-enemy, the iconoclastic Adolf Loos. It was in the Caf�haus that Jugendstil gradually ceded the ground to Expressionism.

The heady atmosphere of the fin-de-si�cle coffee house was to some extent dampened by the impact of World War I. Hereafter, caf�s and, especially, cabarets came to epitomize desperation and decadence. If the prewar caf� had been chaste and largely intellectual, its later incarnation was often blatantly sexual�a marketplace of bodies, not ideas. Particularly in Weimar-era Germany, artists such as Otto Dix, George Grosz and Jeanne Mammen used the caf� and cabaret locale to capture the less savory vicissitudes of urban life. Poverty, loutishness and licentiousness abound in their treatment of the subject. Yet the Weimar-era caf� was also the home of the �new woman,� free for the first time to work outside the home, and at least some of the images suggest the emergence of a newly liberated, liberal society.

IMAGE
George Grosz
At the Pub, 1917
Ink on paper
13" x 8 1/4" (33 x 21 cm)

mondomedeusah