Author: Frederic J. Schwartz, Department of History of Art, University College London

Description: »In early twentieth-century Germany, the artistic avant-garde borrowed procedures from the medical and juridical realms to expose and debate matters that society preferred remain hidden and unspoken. Frederic J. Schwartz explores how the evocation or creation of a “case” provided artists with a means to engage themes that ranged from blasphemy to Lustmord, or sexual murder. Shedding light on the case as a cultural form, Schwartz shows its profound effect on artists and the ways it dovetailed with methods used by these figures to exploit fundamental changes taking place across the mass media of their time.
As Schwartz shows, the case was a common denominator that connected seemingly disparate works. George Grosz and Rudolf Schlichter drew on it for their violent visual art, as did architect Adolf Loos when he equated ornament with crime. Expressionists, meanwhile, approached the question of whether the so-called “mad” shared a right of public expression with those deemed sane, and examined medical and legal approaches to what society labeled as insanity. The case also took on a personal dimension when artists found themselves confronted with, or chose to engage with, the legal system. German courts prosecuted John Heartfield and others for their provocative works, while Bertolt Brecht created publicity for himself by suing the firm to whom he sold the film rights to The Threepenny Opera. Provocative and insightful, The Culture of the Case offers a privileged view of the spaces of representation in which images—in some instances, as cases—functioned at a key moment of modernity.« (Source: MIT Press)

Contents:

	Introduction The Culture of the "Case" and the Problem of Publicness (p. 9)
	1 Architecture and Crime Adolf Loos and the Culture of the Cases (p. 35)
	2 Madness, Expressionism, and the Public Sphere From Oskar Panizza to George Grosz (p. 75)
	3 Lustmord Mapping the Public Sphere (p. 167)
	4 Politics and "Perversion" The Cases of Rudolf Schlichter (p. 243)
	5 Paper, Scissors, Photograph Bertold Brecht and the Culture of the Case (p. 295)
	Conclusion (p. 355)
	Acknoledgments (p. 361)
	Notes (p. 363)
	Index (p. 413)

Reviews: Petersen, Laura. Law, Culture and the Humanities (April 27, 2024). - Full Text: Sage Journals (Restricted Access)

Wikipedia: History of Europe: History of Germany / Weimar Republic | Art: German art | Sex and the law: Lust murder