History of Art Graduate students give 20-minute presentations followed by discussion.
Today: Kristin Schroeder on Sachlichkeit and Sabotage: Fashionable Utility in Lotte Laserstein's Tennis Player (1929)
My Tappan Talk explores the sartorial claim to utility in the portrait, Tennis Player (1929) by the Weimar-era painter Lotte Lasertein (1898-1993). Saturating fashion discourse in the Weimar Republic were the terms Sachlichkeit (sobriety) and Zweckmäßigkeit (utility). Tennis Player depicts the icon of Weimar modernity – the New Woman – looking sportlich and sachlich in her natural milieu. The work conveys the contradictory symbolic values of a functional garment under the regime of Sachlichkeit during the Weimar Republic. In Tennis Player, Laserstein explores Sachlichkeit’s status as a fashionable anti-fashion.
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Kristin Schroeder
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