Oscar Schlemmer

Oscar Schlemmer

Oscar Schlemmer was born in Stuttgard in 1888, since hisparents’ death around 1900 he had to learn to provide for himself from an early age.In 1903 he got an apprenticeship in a marquetry workshop. From 1905 to 1909 Oskar Schlemmer studied at the “Kunstgewerbeschule” as well as the “Akademie der Bildenden Künste” in Stuttgart, where he became Adolf Hölzel‘s master pupil in 1912.

He exhibited Herwarth Walden’s gallery “Der Sturm” in Berlin in 1919.  After his marriage to Helena Tutein one year later, he was invited to Weimar by Gropius to run the sculpture department and the stage workshop at the Bauhaus. He also wanted to put his ideas about ballet into practice, and in 1922 he did so in public for the first time staging the famous Triadisches Ballett. He planned to free the stage from the trappings of tradition in order to give expression to the ‘pure idea.’ The central theme of his work was the problematic of the figure in space, and the mediator between these two was to be the dancer, stripped of his individual identity by the use of costumes and masks.Influenced by Cubism, he usually integrated this figures into geometric structures.

 

Oscar Schlemmer's "Triadisches Ballett". 1922

Until he left the Buhaus in 1929 his art can be seen as a manifesto for a robot society, both artistically, as it mocks the late-Romantic individualism of German painters such as Emil Nolde, and politically: in the wake of the Russian revolution a kind of machine communism was very alluring.

After his resignation from the Bauhaus he was given a professorship at the “Vereinigte Staatsschulen” in Berlin in 1932, but the National Socialists forced him to resign again in 1933.
During the War Oskar Schlemmer worked at the “Institut für Malstoffe” in Wuppertal together with Willi Baumeister and Georg Muche.

Oskar Schlemmer, House of Dr. Rabe, Zwenkau, 1930-31

He led a secluded life at the end of his career and made the small series of eighteen mystical “Fensterbilder” in 1942. Oskar Schlemmer was one of the most versatile artists of the 20th century.

Erich Consemuller's striking photograph of a woman wearing a painted metallic theatrical mask by Oskar Schlemmer and a dress made in the Bauhaus weaving workshop sitting on a Breuer tubular-steel club chair appears to be a half automaton. The blank look of the mask conveys both robotic and foreboding messages. Private collection. —Estate of Erich Consemuller photo

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Small Trades, by Irving Penn

Irving Penn started the small trades project in Paris in 1950 while he was working for vogue magazine. In between fashion shoots he found time to capture disappearing occupations. Inspired by the old ways of people whose era was almost over he created an amalgam of portraiture, fashion and documentation. He continued the series the September of the same year in London and later in New York.

 

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houdinismother

Maeterlinck’s Premiere

In 1908, Maeterlinck premiered Blue Bird at Constantin Stanislavski‘s Moscow Art Theatre. Little remains but these stunning cartes de visite.

I asked Stanislavsky eagerly for photographs of scenes from “The Blue Bird” or else for the original designs of the scenic artist so that I might have them copied… the photographs, I was told, were not available – except those of the players themselves – for the originals had been made by Fischer, a German, and had been destroyed in the pogrom at the beginning of the war in 1914. And in the difficult times Russia has undergone since then, no others have been made. When I pressed my point and asked about the orignal designs, the firm, square but kindly face of my host carried a passing glance of embarassed modesty and then admitted that there were no designs. He had conceived them himself and had personally directed the artist, V. E. Yevgenoff, in the execution of the settings.

The Russian Theater Under the Revolution by Oliver Sayler,1920

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houdinismother

Jeff Bark

This part of Jeff Bark’s work feels a lot like leafing through a diary of vices next door human beings indulge in.

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dmtls

modern archaelogy

Some finds from the diverse and curious stock of Factory 20. Got [big] money to spend? Shop to your hearts content some really unique pieces

USA, 1920s, Vintage Strongman Circus Sledge Hammer. Solid old pine construction. Well worn patina. Solid and ready for use.

USA, c.1930s. Vintage Hypnosis Rotating Disc Machine. Dr. Hietrick's Vertigo Therapy. Bi-Directional Rotating Metal Disc. Fully Functional.

USA, c.1950s. Vintage Life Aquatic Exploration Ships Scuba Oxygen Breathing Tank. Appears to be Functioning.

USA, c.1920s. Old Scorched Liquor Cabinet Bottles.

USA, c.1930s. Rare Fresh'nd Aire Art Deco Styled Floor Fan; Chrome, Steel, Cast Iron and Bakelite Double Blade Propeller.

Claude Cahun

Born Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob (1894-1954) in Nantes, Cahun was raised primarily by her grandmother as her mother was incapable to take care of hair due to mental problems. She began making self portraits at the age of 18, and continued making those intricate pictures throughout the thirties.

Changing through a set of gender ambiguous names, she settled down to Claude Cahun at around 1919. A year later she settled in Paris, along with her life long partner (and step sister) Suzanne Malherbe, where they continued to work on various art forms including writing, collage and photo-montage.

 

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L'Herbe au pauvre homme ["The Poor Man's Grass"

Mostly remembered for her staged self portraits and surrealist tableaux, Claude Cahun challenged perceptions of sexuality, gender,beauty and realism; an important addition to the Parisian surrealist movement who, unlike her male counterparts, represented the female form ambiguous and diverse rather than as a pure symbol of eroticism. (I don’t mean this to sound like feminist propaganda, I’m just pro diversity)

 

1929

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houdinismother

Robert and Shana Parkeharisson

 

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houdinismother

Christer Strömholm

Fiddling with the strange,the grim or the plainly beautiful, he forces the eye to stare at his pictures just for a little bit longer.

 

 

 

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houdinismother

Biederer Bros: Elegant Discipline and the 20s/30s erotic underbelly

The famous Biederer Studio was founded by Jacques Biederer and his brother, Czech expatriates living in Paris, in 1908. Later on, they went on founding Ostra Studio, a photography studio that was well-known in the 1930s for producing high-quality erotic pictures of nudes and fetishistic scenes of bondage, whipping, and spanking.

They produced elegant nudes and fetish pictures, featuring themes such as corporal punishment [whipping, spanking and so on], bondage, pony play and S & M thus  more or less writing  the basics in the lexicon of modern day BDSM.

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Apart from shooting photos Jacques Beiderer also dabbled in stag films. You get to watch these interesting shorts after the jump.

Weird and wondrous postcards

Postcard collecting is a newly developed vice of mr. dmtls. Take a peek inside this mystic world..

Mechanical postcards

Medieval Torture postcards

Stamp Montage postcards

& a postcard fantasy looking a lot like a lost Svankmajer’s short

 

all footage comes from the beautiful CherrylandPostcards channel on youtube

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dmtls