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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Michael Lesy’s book of the same name was first published in 1973. Lesy discovered a striking archive of black and white photographs in the town of Black River Falls dating from the 1890s, the photogrpaher was Charles Van Schaickand. Lesy married a selection of these images to extracts from the town’s newspaper from the same decade. The effect was enchantingly disturbing. The town of Black River Falls seems gripped by some peculiar malaise and the weekly news is dominated by bizarre tales of madness, eccentricity and violence amongst the local population. Suicide and murder are commonplace. People in the town are haunted by ghosts, possessed by devils and terrorized by teenage outlaws and arsonists. A wonderful tale about the art of documentation.The case has also been turned into a film.

Studio portrait of deceased twin infants in coffins. They are Robert and Janet Fitzpatrick, born July 5, 1885, and died April 20, 1886, children of Robert and Martha Fitzpatrick.

A medical student plays with electric shock equipment as Dr. Eugene Krohn, sitting at his desk with his feet up, looks on.

Studio portrait of William Tennant, standing with short pants that reveal his prosthetic legs.

Studio portrait of William Tennant, a magazine and newspaper agent in Black River Falls, sitting in a chair holding a magazine. His artificial legs are propped on either side of him, the stumps of his legs exposed. Copy beneath the image reads, ""Mr. E. H. Erickson of Minneapolis, Minnesota made me these legs on credit, August 1, 1908. Since then I have made nearly every county in the state, and a good many in Minnesota, selling magazines and newspapers. My credit is good wherever I am known, and my legs have carried me thru a great many counties during the last four years."

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youtube will have to do for now

the killing machine

the carnie

cabinet of curiousness

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* Large Masonic Magic Lantern Glass Slide Depictind a Human Skull.

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