Dadaism

Capitalism was defined as the struggle between the owners of capital and those who owned nothing and had to sell their “labor power” to survive. Famously Marx predicted that capitalism would collapse under its own weight since it creates a large proletariat with interests opposed to the interests of the capitalists.

Karl Marx promoted socialism in his lifetime. This definition of capitalism tries to explain that the bourgeoise, who were the ruling class oppressed the proletariat, who were the poor with no capital. So, in essence it also states that the capitalistic form of government made the rich people richer, and the poor people poorer.

Somehow, I do not feel that the prediction of Karl Marx has come true so far. As in the modern world, we see capitalism as a thriving form of economics. Even in a country like China, where their they have a communist form of government, their policies toward business have largely been capitalistic, and China is one of the fastest growing economies of the world. 

OTTO DIX:

Otto Dix was a German painter, born in December 2, 1891. He is particularly noted for his harsh depiction of war in his paintings. He was exposed to art from an early age. Encouraged by his brother, he took up apprenticeship with the landscape painter Carl Senff. By 1910, he completed his apprenticeship and he was subsequently accepted into the Saxon School of Arts and Crafts. Over here encountered influences that would greatly shape his work. He volunteered to enlist in when world war I was declared, and kept a diary where he wrote his experiences. After the war, his experiences at the war led him to depict crippled soldiers as his first great subject. He later moved onto painting nudes, prostitutes, and often savagely, satirical portraits of celebrities from Germany’s intellectual circles. Due to his anti war stance, he became a target of the Nazis during his height of work and fame, and was subsequently removed as his position as art teacher at Dresdan Academy. This also forced him to move away from this particular realm of painting into more different themes like landscape and Christian Subjects. He continued to work until his death in 1969.

SELECTION OF HIS WORKS:

Title: Otto Dix, The Skat Players, 1920.

This painting portrays three German soldiers, all maimed from the water. Two of them miss legs and the third uses his remaining leg to hold cards, since he is missing a hand. Two of them have artificial jaws and one is missing a ear. They are all horribly deformed. Such figures were common sight in Germany and across Europe in the 1920’s. No one wanted to see this people particularly in Germany. They were a reminder of defeat. About 2.5 million people died in the war.

  Title: Otto Dix, Collapsed Trenches, 1924.

Otto Dix used landscape as an integral part of his portrayal of the war cycle. In collapsed trenches the viewer is drawn to the horror as a result of the war. Upon closer examination, we get to see images of skeletons, disarticulated limbs, and other debris of war. The landscape has been made utilized to the maxim, as much as the humans that crawl on it.

Title: Otto Dix, Corpse in a Barbed Wire, 1924

This picture neither glorifies world war I nor heroizes its soldiers, but shows the horrible realities by someone who was there. Dix, an artillery gunner in the trenches at the Somme and on the Eastern Front, focused on the aftermath of battle: dead, dying, and shell-shocked soldiers, bombed-out landscapes, and graves. Dix manipulated the images to render horror images of the war. He portrayed ghastly white bones and stripes of no mans land, leaving brilliant white patches, acid baths ate away at the images showing decaying flesh.