CREATING A MUSEUM FOR GERMAN AND AUSTRIAN ART

[ Activity Reserved Exclusively for Museum VIPs ]

Wednesday, September 22, at 11 a.m., in English

by Renée Price, Director of the Neue Galerie New York

The Neue Galerie New York opened in 2001 to great acclaim, with critics calling it ''superb'' and ''a revelation.'' Founding director Renée Price will give an overview of the museum and its collection, which focusses on German and Austrian art from 1890 to 1940. She will also discuss the development and presentation of the Otto Dix exhibition at the Neue Galerie.

LE PORTRAIT DE L'AVOCAT HUGO SIMONS PAR OTTO DIX :
DU CHEVALET AU MUSÉE, UNE HISTOIRE EXEMPLAIRE

[ Activity Reserved Exclusively for Museum VIPs ]

Wednesday, September 22, at 1.30 p.m., in French

by Nathalie Bondil, the Museum's Director and Chief Curator.

The acquisition, history and provenance of this remarkable portrait, which is in the Museum's collection, bear eloquent witness to a collective effort to build a collection and preserve our past. This text-book case and other pertinent examples will serve as a springboard for an examination of the future of our shared heritage, its enrichment and understanding, from both individual and institutional viewpoints.

OTTO DIX: CRITICAL REALISM BETWEEN THE WORLD WARS

Thursday, September 23, at 4 p.m., in English

by Dr. Olaf Peters, Chief Curator of the Exhibition and Professor, Department of Art History, MLU Halle-Wittenberg, Germany

Otto Dix was probably the most important and radical realist in German art in the first half of the twentieth century. Focussing on the topics of war and sexuality but also examining his merciless portraits, the lecture will contextualize Dix in the field of German art, interpreting him as an outstanding protagonist of the so-called Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). Dix's artistic development from Expressionism and Dadaism to a preoccupation with the Old German Masters will also be addressed.

WEIMAR CINEMA:
MIRROR OF A SOCIETY IN DISSOLUTION

· Wednesday, September 29, at 6 p.m., in French
· Wednesday, October 6, at 6 p.m., in English

by Thomas Barcsay, Professor Emeritus,
Department of History, Ryerson University, Toronto

Otto Dix created some of his most shocking and controversial works during the Weimar Republic. It was precisely at this time that German cinema was at its most innovative and experimental. Like Dix, it challenged, in many of its works, the most fundamental values of bourgeois society. No theme was left unexplored, and no social taboo was left unexamined. As such, Weimar cinema acted as an instrument of modernism both in the stories it told and the techniques it used to tell them.

SCHÜTZENGRABEN [TRENCH]: DIX'S LOST EPIC PAINTING

Wednesday, October 20, at 6 p.m., in English

by Dr. Philipp Gutbrod, author of Otto Dix: The Art of Life and President of Villa Grisebach Auctions

No artist is as strongly linked to the historical events of twentieth-century Germany as Otto Dix. Driven out of his position by the Nazis, he was able to live and work long enough to see his work again lionized for its unique power. Philipp Gutbrod examines the artist through the lens of his lost epic painting Schützengraben [Trench].

L'ALEMAGNE ANNONCIATRICE DE LA « MODERNITÉ »
SUR FOND DE RIVALITÉS EUROPÉENES

Wednesday, November 3, at 6 p.m., in French

by Paul Létourneau, Tenured Professor of Contemporary German History, University of Montreal

Historian Paul Létourneau will present the tormented Germany of the period between the two world wars. He will explore the influential and very poorly understood role of the West in what happened there. He will also examine the singular introspection of German society during this time, which prevailed among artists with the sensibility of Otto Dix.

CRÉATION ET SUBVERSION : GEORGE GROSZ 1893-1959

Wednesday, November 24, at 6 p.m., in French

by Christiane Gosselin, art historian

Grosz's work presents another facet of the New Objectivity, a cynical response to the raw realism of the moral and social crisis that gripped the era. His apocalyptic images and caricatures are a scathing indictment of the Church, the military and triumphant capitalism. Grosz wields art like a weapon against the violence inherent in war and as a tool for political struggle. Stripped of his citizenship and often reviled, Grosz was exhibited with the ''degenerate'' artists.

OTTO DIX: TACKLING THE THIRTIES

Wednesday, December 1, at 6 p.m., in English

by Catherine MacKenzie, Ph.D., Professor of Art History, Concordia University

How did Otto Dix, whose work had probably outraged Weimar authorities more than any other artist who remained in Germany through the 1930s, negotiate his role as a maker of images during a decade marked by the increasingly close regulation of the art world by the National Socialists?

A CRUEL EYE: OTTO DIX'S PORTRAITURE

Wednesday, December 8, at 6 p.m., in English

by Kathryn Simpson, Ph.D. candidate,
Art History Department, Concordia University

German artist Otto Dix (1891-1969) is associated with the Neue Sachlichkeit, or New Objectivity, movement, yet his portraits are anything but unbiased. Instead, Dix uses his cruel eye to render images that tell us as much about the artist's own view of the chaos and decay of the Weimar Republic as they do about the figures themselves.

TRANSGRESER LES TABOUS

Wednesday, December 15, at 6 p.m., in French

by Constance Naubert-Riser, Professor Emeritus, Department of Art History and Film Studies, University of Montreal

In the 1920s, Otto Dix, a singular, baffling and fascinating artist, was critical of the Weimar Republic and the collapse of moral values that followed Germany's defeat. He forcefully attacked the Secular Ideal of Art – Beauty – replacing it with the ugliness of reality. At first glance, a negative image of woman emerges in his work. It has sparked numerous debates that are worth exploring.