Dirnentragodie (“Tragedy of the Street”). 1927. Josef Fenneker.
36 ½ x 72 1/8 in./92.7 x 183.2 cm
You can already see, in this riveting two-sheet poster, why the Danish actress Asta Nielsen was the first international star of silent film: the large dark eyes, a haunted face, her boyish figure. She often portrayed headstrong, passionate women trapped by tragic circumstances: transforming this melodramatic trope with naturalism and overt eroticism – leading her films to be heavily censored in the U.S. “Dirnentragodie,” or ‘Tragedy of the Street,’ was Nielsen’s final silent role. The film epitomizes the Weimar movement called The New Objectivity, which tried to create a middle ground between Brechtian alienation and Expressionist emotionalism by forcing middle-class characters into the oppressive social circumstances of the street. “Dirnentragodie” features Nielsen as an aging prostitute who takes in a young man running away from his middle-class family. She fantasizes about a different future; the man returns to his family; she’s accused of murdering her pimp. This 1927 Fenneker design was used for the release of the film in Vienna.
During Pride Month, take a closer look at this 1926 painting of a gender-ambiguous couple on view now in Scenes from the Collection.Gert Wollheim, a German-Jewish artist, lived in Berlin at the height of the Weimar Republic. His portrait depicts the pair standing in a café during a period in Germany of economic instability and reckoning with the ghosts of World War I, when social convention and sexual mores were challenged. While fashionable and theatrical, the figures are not obviously women. Newly granted the right to vote, women of the era were called Neue Frau and enjoyed greater earning power and sexual freedom than ever before. Wollheim painted the couple to reflect those newfound liberties, and also used a visual trope to identify them as lesbians.
Set to go to auction on October 11th, the painting’s estimated value is over $70,000.
If you choose to purchase it, please note that the price does not include my commission. Legally, you wouldn’t owe me anything; ethically, I’d say about 15 per cent would soothe your conscience.
