Depicting the 1930s "New Man"

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

There are two exhibits showing in Ottawa right now, both of which are well worth seeing, even though their subject matter is grim. By coincidence, The 1930s: The Making of "The New Man" (at the National Gallery of Canada until Sept. 7) and Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race (at the Canadian War Museum until Nov. 11) share a common theme. This article discusses the show at the gallery, while the museum exhibit will be the focus of an article next week.

Biological models have long been important in art, but this summer's multimedia exhibit at the National Gallery of Canada, called The 1930s: The Making of "The New Man," focuses on the decade leading up to the Holocaust, when eugenics and racism were taken to horrific extremes.

The exhibition is divided into nine sections, or themes: Genesis, Convulsive Beauty, the "Will to Power," the Making of "the New Man," Mother Earth, the Appeal of Classicism, "Faces of Our Time," "Crowds and Power" and the Charnel House. More than 200 works are on display, mainly paintings, but also sculptures, drawings and photographs. The artists are from Germany, Russia, Italy, Spain, France, Mexico, the United States and Canada, and many names will be familiar: among them, Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, Wassily Kandinsky, André Masson, Pablo Picasso, August Sander, Alexandre Hogue, Jackson Pollock, Alex Colville, Joan Miró, Alexander Rodchenko, Horst P. Horst, Otto Dix and André Kertész. The art is not arranged chronologically and an artist will appear in more than one section.

According to the exhibit's promotional material, The 1930s: The Making of "The New Man" allows visitors to compare two areas on which biology had an impact in this era, "the arts, where the idea of metamorphosis produced an esthetic revival, and politics, where the struggle to bring about a eugenic and racist renewal had unprecedented consequences for society." At the entrance to the exhibit is "The Glass Man," a replica of Franz Tschackert's anatomical model, which he presented at the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden in 1930. It sets a sombre tone for what follows.

In Genesis, artists use images of fruit, eggs, cells and other elements of nature and link them with the human form. In Convulsive Beauty, surrealist works offer a distorted and at times disturbing portrait of the human body and its relation to the world around it. Then the exhibit becomes more focused on the art that appeared in totalitarian regimes in the 1930s, mainly in Russia, Italy and, of course, Germany. The bold, realistic paintings include a couple of dictator Benito Mussolini; photographs depict young athletes in victorious poses.

Mother Earth comes next, providing realistic representations of peasants working the land, rather than sports and political figures. In these depictions is the idea that the "New Man" will be born from the earth by hard work and traditional values. The early settlers of Israel took such imagery – that was used against them in this decade – and gave it new meaning, using it to promote the idea of the strong, healthy soil-tilling kibbutzniks that would revive the desert and make the land, and the Jewish people, thrive.

This is what is particularly interesting about The 1930s: The Making of "The New Man": while the despotic regimes of Germany, Italy and Russia used such art as political propaganda and warped the concept of the "New Man" to achieve horrific ends, many countries around the world were fascinated by the idea of attaining bodily perfection and beauty. This is especially apparent in the exhibit's next section, the Appeal of Classicism, in which the classical art of the Greco-Roman period is resurrected in 1930s Western art, as representative of a great civilization, whose respect for proportion and harmony was to be imitated or rejected.

In "Faces of Our Time," the paintings and photography displayed shows how some artists tried to depict the reality of humanity, with its imperfections – to counter the ideology of the "New Man" or "New Woman" – and with its individuality, to counter the notion of one unified mass adhering to the dictators in power.

"Crowds and Power" takes up this latter idea, the expression being coined by Austrian writer Elias Canetti in the 1960s, according to the gallery's website, but "conceived in the 1930s with the rise of totalitarian regimes and their manipulation of the masses. Organized crowds began to emerge, in which the individual, envisioned as a cell, melded into the social tissue."

The final section of the exhibit contains some of the more upsetting images, from artists who witnessed the cruel devastation wrought by the drive to create the "New Man," either from within, while it was happening, or after the fact. It's a depressing note on which to end, but with continuing racial and religious tensions – competing views of human perfection – that have recently led, and will once again lead, to genocide, it's an apt choice.

The 1930s: The Making of "The New Man" is sponsored by the National Gallery of Canada Foundation, the Ottawa Citizen, Le Droit and CBC. It is recommended to take the audioguide, as it provides additional information on the art displayed, which makes for a richer experience.

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