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(jazzy music)

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Voiceover: We are looking at Otto Dix's

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painting "Portrait of Sylvia von Harden"

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and it's from 1926.

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Voiceover: Who was Sylvia von Harden?

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Voiceover: Sylvia von
Harden was a fantastic,

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fabulous figure who was
not actually a journalist

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even though the title says
that she's a journalist.

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She was less of a journalist but actually

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a poet and a short story
writer who worked in Germany.

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This shows her in the Romanisches Cafe

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in Berlin, which was huge hangout for all

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of the cool avant-garde artists

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and writers and poets of the 1920s.

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Sylvia von Harden is pictured here in this

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little corner where
she would have hung out

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at a little cafe table.

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She was an avant-garde neue frau.

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She was friendly with various artists

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and poets and writers of the era.

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Voiceover: So neue frau is
the new woman in Germany

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in the early 20th century.

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We're in between the Great
War and World War II here.

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The new woman, is that the woman in

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the public sphere who goes out and works?

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She has close-cropped hair, I see,

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which makes her rather androgynous.

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Her hands are very large.

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Do these things have
to do with representing

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the new woman in a work of art, perhaps?

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Voiceover: It does.

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It has to do with the
new woman in general,

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but it also has to do with Otto
Dix's style of portraiture.

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One thing that Otto Dix was famed for

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was making his sitters quite ugly

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and quite unattractive.

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Sylvia von Harden does
look like this in real life

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but not to quite the
extent that Dix shows her.

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Things like her hair;

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she did have a close-cropped haircut.

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In Germany this cut had a very funny

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specific name, called the Bubikopf,

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which was in style all
throughout the '20s.

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She did have a sort of
androgynous appearance.

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This dress is based on a
dress that she actually wore.

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It does have a lot of basis in reality.

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But things like her hands, he elongates

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and sort of creates these immense hands.

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I think that has a lot
to do with deflection

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and placement as it draws
your attention to things like

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the area where her breasts should be,

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which, because she's such
an androgynous figure,

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she doesn't really have any.

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She's wearing this very
geometric patterned dress

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that hides any kind of feminine
figure that she might have.

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She's covered up.

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It even has a turtleneck so we don't

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even get to see her neck.

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Then you see the other hand kind of

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draped across her lap, covering it up.

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There are other elements that you

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might be able to see that
signal different things.

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Voiceover: In the body?

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Voiceover: If you look
actually at this great detail.

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The sagging stocking you can kind of see.

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That's a really great moment of realism

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that Dix captures.

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You don't want to have your stockings

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be shown as sagging.

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It sort of implies a kind of messiness.

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She doesn't seem to have a
very polished air about her.

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On the other hand, it kind of gives her

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this sort of subversive quality.

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She's sitting there and she's looking out.

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She has a monocle even.

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She has these particular features,

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all these little accessories that pinpoint

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her as a particular kind of woman;

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the sagging stocking, the large hands,

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the monocle which
highlights the kind of sight

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and gaze that a new woman might have.

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Then she has cigarettes.

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She's smoking in a public place.

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That's all kind of building a particular

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sort of identity for this character,

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and Dix was really talented
at doing that in his painting.

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Voiceover: The patterned
dress seems to really

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emphasize a sense of surface and flatness

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instead of her body.

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Her neck seems very cylindrical and almost

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mechanical rather than a
human organic form as well.

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Voiceover: I think one
of the things that I like

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about this painting,
too, is the way that Dix

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uses these kind of
geometric areas and shapes

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and throws it into contrast
with, if you see behind her,

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she's sitting on this really
ornately patterned chair.

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Those kind of curves are more feminine

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than her body is, which I think is a great

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kind of a comment to make.

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Then there's the circle of her monocle;

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there's the circle of the marble table;

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the circle of the glass, which has a very

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particular kind of cocktail in it

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that was popular at the time.

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So those things, and then things that are

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longer and flatter, like
her body, which really

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should be the least
flat if you're thinking

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about what bodies look like.

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Are bodies round and sort of curvaceous

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and sensual things or
are they desexualized,

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androgynized forms which Dix does here?

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Voiceover: We should
probably contextualize

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this in terms of the new objectivity,

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or neue Sachlichkeit.

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Voiceover: Yeah, Sachlichkeit.

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Voiceover: Which was
occurring at this time,

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a movement in between
the wars, which went back

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to a bit more of a figural
style, a bit more naturalism;

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relatively more naturalistic
than what one might

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be familiar with in terms of Kirchner

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or German expressionism
or Kandinsky of course;

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other artists who were working
in Germany at the time.

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Why going back to this style, which is

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a bit more naturalistic?

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Voiceover: I think that the realism is,

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there are many things that
are important about it

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at this time, but this is 1926.

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There's this sort of
general sense in Germany,

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this is going on in other
countries in Europe as well,

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kind of a return to order; kind
of looking back at tradition,

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a kind of sense that they wanted to create

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something new, but they wanted it to have

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a particular kind of
meaning and a rootedness

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in something that was very German.

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So Otto Dix is really
looking back to traditions

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of portraiture in Germany.

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He looks back to Holbein who creates

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incredibly important portraits

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and sort of bringing
out that German quality.

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Voiceover: Holbein's
hyper-naturalistic, isn't he?

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Voiceover: Yes, he is hyper-naturalistic.

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What he does is he takes naturalism

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and realism and he sort of
lifts it to another level

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where it almost is caricature.

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So it kind of falls between that.

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A lot of neue Sachlichkeit
painters did that;

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a kind of photographic realism, almost,

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but also taken to an extreme.

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Voiceover: That's interesting that it's

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characterized as a kind of call to order

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or a return to order, while we're

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representing someone who is apparently

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overturning some very longstanding gender

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hierarchies and ordered ways of thinking

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about men and women as very separate.

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The new woman, particularly
as it's embodied

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here by Sylvia, seems to be confounding

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those categories rather than reveling

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in how neat and ordered they are.

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Voiceover: She's definitely about

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overturning things.

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Even her name is actually made up.

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It's a pseudonym.

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She changed her name when she
started her writing career.

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She's not a huge, very popular writer,

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but she's one of many poets and writers

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who are working on different pieces

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that are published in small journals

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that very small audiences have read.

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She's definitely
overturning different kinds

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of cultural stereotypes
and gender stereotypes,

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and kind of in that space of subversion

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in the cafe culture of
Germany at the time.

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Voiceover: What did Dix's sitters think

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about the fact that he
liked to make people ugly?

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Did that bother them?

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Voiceover: Sometimes it did.

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A lot of times it was
almost like a privilege

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to be painted by Dix and portrayed

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in this particularly ugly kind of way.

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One or two sitters did
have a problem with it.

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He was commissioned by sitters

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because he was so well known,

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and at this point, in
'26, he's very well known

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for his painting style.

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Earlier than that, some
of his more wealthy

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business clients did not particularly like

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the way that they were painted.

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Sylvia von Harden, as far as I know,

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loved the way that this painting worked.

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She even sat with it.

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It's at the Pompidou Center now.

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In the '60s she even
sat and had a photograph

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taken of herself in front of the portrait.

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You can see even at that
point that she still

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sort of looks a little
bit like the figure in it.

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I just think it's a great portrait.

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Voiceover: Me too.

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(jazzy music)