German Artists' Writings in the XX Century - 15
George Grosz
An Autobiography
Translated by Nora Hodges, Foreword by Barbara McClosey
Berkeley, University of California Press, 1997, xvi-312 pages
Review by Francesco Mazzaferro. Part Two
[Original Version: February 2018 - New Version: April 2019]
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| Fig. 9) The most recent German version, published by Schöffling Verlag in 2009 |
The American years (1932-1946)
On April 26, 1932,
a telegram from New York reached Grosz at his home in Berlin: "We invite you to instruct one morning class
June July and August at one hundred fifty dollars per month and one evening
class during winter beginning October at one hundred and twenty five dollars
per month stop two criticisms weekly cable reply immediately at our expense =
Art Students League” [45]. The Arts Students League of New York was an art school (still active today http://www.theartstudentsleague.org/)
created in Manhattan in 1875, with a 'democratic' inclusive program, if compared
to the Academy of Fine Arts in New York: since its foundation, also less
well-off students and female students were admitted. For the German painter,
who wrote in An autobiography that he
received the telegram just after having made a premonitory dream about the
imminent repression of freedom in Germany, the decision to leave was immediate:
"Today I know that some power wanted
to preserve me. What for, I could not say. Perhaps as a witness? Anyway, that
is how I came to America" [46]. He boarded (without his family) on May
26th. It was the beginning of a teaching activity occupying him in New York
without interruption for 25 years [47].
Grosz had always
been fascinated by America. Since the years of youth, his autobiography testified
his passion for ‘Indians and cowboys’ stories, for American clothes and
cars but also for teddy bears, for 'American bars' and for ragtime. The
first pages of the chapter "New York
in June" were a hymn to the country of freedom and great
opportunities.
Once arrived in
America, his first contacts were already well established German-language
intellectuals in New York: the Austrian graphic collector Max Morgenstern
(1883-1946) and the Berlin art dealer Israel Ber Neumann (1887-1961). The
latter - after having promoted secession, Dada and Expressionism in Berlin and
other German cities - embarked on a new undertaking in the US as early as 1923, launching
in his New York gallery all modern German art as well as other European artists
(Chagall, Archipenko) and also young Americans like Alexander Calder. "In those days Neumann was both my friend and
my dealer. He could discuss art for hours on end with his soft, dark voice”
[48]. And yet his attempts to launch Grosz's work in the United States did not
succeed from a commercial point of view.
Grosz enjoyed New
York, even in “the depth of the American
Depression” [49] caused by the collapse of the financial markets of 1929. "In winter
you could see ladies in fur coats selling apples in the street, and many a
well-dressed person stood in the soup lines. But for so many years I had seen
far worse things, and recorded them, that these not very obtrusive things did
not seem at all abnormal. (...) I liked New York. Perhaps New York liked me
too: one has to love before one is loved in return. I did not have the common
German habit of immediately comparing everything with home and criticizing it
from that point of view. I lent myself to new impressions and took my time in
making judgments. I tried to learn the language, and to absorb and understand
what was unknown and strange” [50].
His success as a
teacher was immediate, but that as a painter remained limited. His iconographic
sarcasm was not in line with American taste. "Occasionally, I was commissioned to do a drawing, but they always told: «Not too German, Mr. Grosz. Not too bitter. You
know what we mean, don’t you?»” [51]. I.B. Neumann organized a personal exhibition at the Barbizon
Plaza, a well-established hotel: "I
shook hands with about a thousand people. It was wonderful; everyone was happy
to meet me; they had heard «so much about me» («Oh, sure!"), but
unfortunately the success was in prestige rather than money" [52] Although his paintings were not selling, the painter
decided that his life was as from now on in America; he returned to Germany
after the end of the classes in October 1932, but only to organize the move and to leave immediately again for the US, this time with his family, in January 1933, a few days
before the elections that would lead to the victory of Adolf Hitler. The original
intention of the painter, before the Nazis took over power, was not to cut ties
with Germany: therefore, he published three long “Letters from America” in "Kunst
und Künstler in August, September and December 1932 [53]. These journalistic
reports were another testimony of his close relationship with writing. Moreover,
these pages, full of enthusiasm, did not reveal yet the deep dissatisfaction
with the US that he would describe years later in An Autobiography. But if in 1932 Grosz saw himself as a bridge
between the US and the German public opinion, the artist considered himself, in
fact, in voluntary exile after the seizure of Hitler and the Reichstag fire
only a month later. The intention to break with Germany was confirmed, after
hearing from friends that the Nazis looked for him in vain in the family home
and in the studio. "I had reason to
believe that I would not be alive, had they found me there” [54].
Already during
the first year of his stay in New York, the inspiration as a satirical cartoonist
was discontinued, while a more artistic vein took over. Here is what he wrote:
"A that time (...) I myself began to
change. (…) The way I feel about it is that the artist in me became
predominant. I became suddenly disgusted with all those satirical distortions.
(...) But as people receded, landscape and nature moved closer and closer. I
saw trees and bushes more accurately, grass and leaves, and also flies, turtles
and ants. There came a time when my landscapes became lonely and devoid of
people. Was that a good or a bad sign for my development? I know today that it
was good. It was not an escape, not a flight; it was an approach, a penetration”
[55].
“So the second part of my life was in
America, and began with an inner conflict with my own past, a past that I still
reject today to some degree. More than ever I relegate caricature to a minor
position in art; I believe that the times when it predominates are times of
decay. Surely life and death are big subjects, not suitable for sarcasm and
cheap jokes” [56].
“As things and people become increasingly
remote, other, new worlds suddenly open up. Nature came closer to me in all its
simplicity, unity and beauty, but also in the inexorable lawfulness of its
elements. I could wander for hours over the dunes of Cape Cod, and humbly try
to reproduce my feelings about nature as well as I could, neither adding nor
omitting anything. Large, idealistic words and phrases fell away like deadwood.
I wanted to be a free artist, and that is what I believe I have been ever since”
[57].
This process making
his art more intimate coincided with the start of the new World War and
therefore could not be conclusive: "Terrors
still live in me, but no longer are they visions, dreams or caricatures. They
are neither invented nor contrived to help educate mankind. They are made of
apocalyptic stuff and reveal the dualism of the world from its other side, not
the blossoming side, but rather that of murder, arson, terror and death. I
believe that I feel a good bit of old German tradition in myself. It is that
tradition that makes me always see the dichotomy, life and death, so I can no
longer literally and optimistically only exclaim: «Life!» «Life!» «Life!»” [58].
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| Fig. 10) The Spanish version published by the publishing house Capitán Swing in 2011 |
The pages of the
autobiography let us understand, however, that the American experience revealed
itself, all in all, a disappointment. With forty he assumed the citizenship of
his new homeland: he wanted "to
totally assimilate” [59], distancing himself from the attitude of other
European exiles, who were always ready to criticize the country for the absence
of a culture. He wanted to lose European arrogance [60]. From a pictorial point
of view, he perceived this process as a liberation, but success never came:
"The more « American» I thought, the better I
painted. I cannot explain that phenomenon even today, but my oils became
richer, my colors and textures better, my modeling more plastic. On the surface
I became increasingly cynical and occasionally had real fits of fury against
art and artists. Both, including myself, seemed completely superfluous, and I
would have liked best to change my vocation. Those fits would, of course,
always come when I was not selling, and
that would often be for months at a time” [61]. The
painter could count only on the modest teacher salary available at the Arts Students' League, which he
integrated with private lessons. The attempt to found his own private school of
"painting, drawing, composition and
art criticism", first with his peer painter Maurice Sterne (1878-1957)
and then alone, did not take off [62]. In lucky moments, he received private
teaching assignments from industrialists and wealthy families. In fact, Grosz was
very often forced to live on expedients, telling lies to his wife and himself.
Rescue came from the Guggenheim Foundation with a grant and from the
appointment as illustrator by the magazine "Esquire" [63].
The will to
assume attitudes and mentality of the host country placed Grosz in conflict
with some of the leading German intellectuals in exile. The meeting with Thomas
Mann (1877-1955) [64], for example, was particularly unpleasant: the writer and
his wife were (wrongly) convinced that Hitler was a passing phenomenon, and that
in a few weeks the German people would free themselves from a fool; the painter
was sure, instead, that German masses were now accustomed to taking orders without
hesitations and that they therefore got what they deserved. The discussion,
carried out on the occasion of a lunch, ended with a quarrel and there would
never be a second meeting. Grosz received a visit from his friend Brecht, but
on that occasion he only reported the bad impression he got from the bodyguard
of the now famous writer [65]. He showed, instead, much empathy for the suicide
of the playwright Ernst Toller (1893-1939) [66] and the arrival at Ellis Island
of the writer Hans Borchardt (1888-1951), whom Grosz helped out of Germany
after years spent in concentration camps: during the captivity, Borchardt had
lost hearing, a finger and the necessary tranquility [67]. Among the many encounters,
Grosz also met de Chirico in New York, describing him as a very lonely man
[68].
A great cynic
What image of
Grosz does An autobiography provide
us, from a human point of view? In 1954 the monthly Der Spiegel dedicated him the cover page, calling him "The saddest of men in Europe". The
article, available on the internet in German [69], referred to some verses that
Grosz had composed on the theme, calling himself a "phenomenon of sadness". To date, the expression has become
almost paradigmatic, as an example of how depressed he has been. The English
autobiography of 1946 (and the German edition of 1955) did not display however
similar phrases. However, speaking of his youth, Grosz wrote: "I was a friendlier person then than I am
today, so the world seemed friendlier to
me. Now I know that I have lived through the end of a world, and that the last
years of that lost world were the least conscious and thus happiest years of my life” [70].
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| Fig. 11) The first of the three Letters from America published in Kunst und Künstler in 1932 |
Certainly, already in the introduction the author portrayed himself as a great cynic: "If I have become skeptical about progress, it is because of the experiences of my lifetime. Mine was a time when the sweetest declarations of the brotherhood of man were voiced at the same time as the bloodiest wars in the history of our planet were being fought; solace and suicide in grand style” [71]. The war experience in the trenches certainly contributed to that basic attitude: "War meant horror, mutilation, annihilation. (...) Then, when it all bogged down in defeat a few years later, when everything collapsed, nothing was left for me and most of my friends but disgust and horror” [72]. In the following years, the negative experience of the Weimar Republic marked him forever, and he could not hope anymore for achieving collective goods: after those years, the artist believed only in happiness as a private dimension. He wrote: "We were like sailboats in the wind, with white or black or red sails. Some boats sported pennants with lightning bolts, or a hammer and sickle, or a swastika on a steel helmet; at a distance, they all looked alike. We had very little control our boats, and had to maneuver cleverly to keep from capsizing in the storm. Many a boat was floundering keel upwards. The storm raged uninterrupted, but we kept on sailing; we did not understand its melody; our hearing was blunted by continuous commands. All we knew was that there was one wind blowing from the east and another from the west. And that the storm blew all over the earth. Even the capital of our new German Republic was like a bubbling cauldron. You could not see who was heating the cauldron; you could merely see it merrily bubbling, and you could feel that heat increasing. There were speakers on every street corner and songs of hatred everywhere. Everybody was hated: the Jews, the capitalists, the gentry, the communists, the military, the landlords, the workers, the unemployed, the Black Reichswehr, the control commissions, the politicians, the department stores, and again the Jews. It was a real orgy of incitement, and the Republic was so weak that you hardly noticed it. All this must end with an awful crash. It was a completely negative world, with gaily colored froth on top that many people mistook for the true, the happy Germany before the eruption of the new barbarians” [73]. The conclusions to which this discourse was leading are totally in contrast with the image on Grosz that is normally proposed to us today, i.e. as a politically-driven artist who denounced the class privileges of the upper middle class: "I pondered a lot about right and wrong at that time. It was in the air. But my conclusions always came out to the detriment of everybody. Classifying people in a black and white way might be an efficient method of dealing with large masses, but it went against my grain. The larger the group with whom I associated became, the more individualistic I got. I finally came to perceive the world as a natural phenomenon, an eternal coming and going that could not necessarily be explained. I admit that this was not exactly a religious concept, but ever since Nietzsche I suspected «morality». There is neither good nor evil in rain and wind, in volcanic eruptions, or in the snow that bites our legs” [74].
What is clear is
that the artist had great nostalgia for the old Wilhelminian regime, as an era
marked by style and depth of thought: "Everything
that we experience today as so repulsively commonplace began first during World War I and continued thereafter. The
vulgarity of public life that we now accept was then still tempered by a mild
aristocratic regime. Some of the old humanism established by the great poets
and thinkers was still alive; the time of concentration camps, of mass
executions, of race and class hatreds had not yet come” [75]. That world
obviously already contained within itself all the germs of its own ruin: "We were still living in the last harmless,
simple, happy years before World War I,
not yet in the world that Nietzsche had foretold. The supermen, the destructive
Machiavellis did exist, but they were still confined to bohemian cafés, studios
and the like, or gave vent to their feelings in newspaper columns. The clocks
of course were already set. Hitler, Mussolini and Lenin were alive, had their
traveling papers, and knew where they had to change trains; but the future was
hidden from us simpler mortals. Sporadic screams from oracular priests sounded
shrill and unlikely. Human beings are primarily optimistic and want to survive,
so they gladly plug their ears with the wax of hope, wait until the last
moment, and shun Cassandra” [76].
“We were living in a quiet, less expensive
world that had not smelled blood or seen corpses for almost fifty incredible
years of peace and had become so «soft» that people got all excited
about the least bit of human injustice. We were nowhere near the
Bolshevik-fascist contempt for human beings, viewing man as a mere cipher
without identity. Nowhere near, but getting closer, still, there were a few
years left of «human
rights». There was still a trace of the great humanists who lived and
worked in Germany in the early nineteenth century, of Goethe, of Weimar as a
cultural concept, of the Humboldt brothers, of Hardenberg, Winckelmann,
Büchner, of German romanticism - though that irrational movement had seeds
that did not germinate until after 1918. Before World War I, German socialism
was identical with pacifism and, thank goodness, there were no communists in our
country. Rosa Luxembourg, «Red Rose,» was merely a socialist
organizer; only after the collapse of Germany did she become a communist, and
that was after she had voiced her disapproval of some principles to Lenin” [77].
A single man against masses
If there is a
line of continuity along the entire bibliography, it is the horror of any
massification. In every moment of his life - Grosz wrote - he was terrified by
the idea of losing his individuality and entrusting his destiny to a 'populist'
movement. This was already true in the years when he had just arrived from
Dresden to Berlin, just before the Great War: "My personal hopes never lay with masses, even before I got to know the
work of Spengler and the beautifully clear Gustave Le Bon. Even my mode of
living showed my tendency to dissociate myself. I lived high above everything
and everybody, in an attic studio, closer to the moon, the stars, the birds
than to people, from whom I could always descend if I felt like it. My hopes
were based on me alone, not on others. Without being an intellectual egotist, I
paid attention only to myself. I wanted to succeed, that was the sum and
substance of my philosophy, and probably the creed of many young artists. It
goes without saying that I was completely nonpolitical” [78].
His mistrust -
and in fact the proclaimed hatred - towards every collective institution soon
materialized, during the years of military service during the First World War
(to which, however - we should recall it once again – he participated as a
volunteer): "I hated to be a mere
number; I would have hated it even if I had been a high number. I was yelled at
so long that I finally had the courage to yell back. I struggled against
stinking stupidity and brutality, but I remained in the minority. It came down
to hand combat, and pure self-defense on my side. I defended no ideals and no
belief; I defended myself. Belief? Ah! In what? In German heavy industry, the
great profiteurs? Our beloved Fatherland? At least I had the courage to voice
what so many were thinking. Madness, probably, rather than courage. Everybody
around me was afraid; I was afraid too, but not afraid to resist this fear. I
could write pages about this much discussed subject, but everything I have to
say can be seen in my drawings” [79].
Grosz was
discharged for health reasons, but, as the war progressed, he was re-rolled
again (this time not as a volunteer): "I
had to report for active duty again in mid-1917. This time I was to train
recruits and guard and transport prisoners of war. But I simply could no longer
bear it. One night they found me, almost unconscious, head first in the latrine
... I lay for a fairly long time in the infirmary. All of a sudden, they said I
was well. But it wasn’t; my nerves were shot; I refused to get up. In fury, I
physically attacked the medical sergeant. I will never forget with what lusty
enthusiasm seven of my ambulatory «comrades» fell upon me. One of them, a baker in civilian life, jumped with
his whole weight onto my cramped legs, happily shouting: «Gotta step on his legs, gotta keep on trampling
on his legs, that’ll calm him down.» It did. But that incident
was burned indelibly into my mind; how these harmless, ordinary people beat me
up, and how they enjoyed it. There was no personal animosity. It was an
unconscious principle: we are not protesting, so you can’t protest either. «Let him have it, step on his legs!» Later, we probably continued
peacefully to play cards, drink beer, smoke, and tell dirty stories. That
happened in 1917, a time when nobody believed in anything anymore, and we in
the infirmary were fed dried vegetables, coffee made of turnips and artificial
honey that affected our stomach walls. I had never really believed in the
solidarity of the masses and never desired to live with the masses; but then in
the war, when I really got to know the so-called masses-! I found solidarity
only in single cases, from friend to friend” [80].
Years later, a
few days before leaving Germany for the United States, speaking this time about
the early 1930s, he confirmed the same attitude: "At
that time I was still interested in politics, but my faith in the masses had
become shaky – that is, to be honest, my faith in the «mission» of my art. I
had gradually realized that this sort of propaganda was greatly overrated, that
the agitators simply mistook the effect of the agitation on themselves for the
effect on their beloved proletarian masses, and that the leaders, with all
their lovely slogans considered those masses as nothing but a herd of sheep
with themselves as bellwethers, up front” [81].
The story-telling dimension
One of the main
characteristics of An autobiography -
as we have already said - was its dimension as a story. Just think, for
example, of the long chapter in which Grosz explained the growing presence of
Nazism in Germany narrating a fairy tale with an unfortunate conclusion
(entitled "A Fairy Story")
[82]. The story dimension was also prevalent in his memory of the visit to the
elderly novelist Karl May [83], in the pages where he explained the
unsuccessful attempt by Dr. Stadelmann - one of the supporters of Dadaism - to
bring spirits of dead people back to life [84], in the disrespectful account of a reception at
the Soviet embassy in Berlin [85], in the beautiful description of the journey
in the chapter "Russia in 1922”
[86], in the pages on "Making good
in America" in which he told with great detachment of his humiliating
attempts to get hired in Hollywood [87]. In short, in An autobiography Grosz was, above all, a writer, a story-teller.
At the end of
this review, I would like to reproduce some pages of erotic content. It was the
chronicle of the first time when the young Grosz, still a child, spying from a
window, saw a woman undress and observed her meticulously. That woman was, in
many respects, her first model; perhaps the artist recounted that episode
having in mind the movements and positions that, in the following decades, he
would ask female models to assume. An entire chapter - "Peeking into the thirteenth room - was
dedicated to the episode, which I am reporting here only in part” [88]. From a
temporal point of view, as we have said, it was an episode of the youth period,
a phase already recalled in the memoirs published in the Kunst und Künstler magazine in 1931. However, in 1931 the artist
did not speak about this episode, and, in my opinion, these pages were written much
after that date, most likely in the United States.
Just in the
American years, in fact, Grosz developed in full an erotic vein that had always
been present in his art (since the Dada period of the 1920s), making it one of
the constant themes of his activity and producing a very large (and even
repetitive) series of nude women. Apparently, Grosz went along the same
trajectory that had interested Renoir in the last years of his life, when he
discovered Rubens as a source of inspiration. Compared to previous decades,
Grosz's nudes in the American years abandoned every sense of caricature and paradigm
of the human condition in society. Until then, he had always represented naked
women to desecrate society; almost always, the nudity and youth of the ladies
were opposed to the presence of always elder men, portrayed in civilian and
professional clothes, to point out that it was mainly about prostitution. Now,
he rather revealed the pleasure of observing graceful bodies, displayed in
positions with a strong erotic charge.
In Grosz’s American
nudes, women were often immersed in nature, as an expression of the common
beauty of the female body and the landscape. According to the curators of the
exhibition "Grosz. The years in
America 1932-1958", his wife Eva (1895-1960) frequently served as a
model in the dunes of the beloved beach of Cape Cod, in Massachusetts [89]. She
was portrayed, as the case may be, in the manner of Rubens, Boucher or Dürer. Not
to be forgotten, Grosz was for many years a nude professor at the Arts Students' League of New York.
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Fig. 12) A 1954 cover page of Der Spiegel, defining George Grosz as "the saddest person in Europe"
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I therefore believe that there is an intellectual parallel between the inclusion of this chapter in the autobiography, an almost 'Fellini-like' description of the majestic body of a friend's aunt in the act of undressing, and the nude drawings of the late 1930s and early 1940s. The story perspective in its written expression had, as its corresponding element, the clear descriptive intention of the drawing. Grosz artist and Grosz writer were in full harmony. I noted down even lexical correspondences: describing the body of the woman who, as a child, he observed in secret, the painter spoke of "fleshy dunes" [90], while many of his images are representations of female nudes in the dunes.
The detail of
the writing, the attention for the description of the movements, the diary of
the emotions of the young, the sequencing in the way how each piece of clothing
is falling, the progressive discovery of increasingly remote parts of the body,
all this seemed to represent the literary correspondent of a painting that had
become discreetly sensual. The attitude of the critics was to consider Grosz's
nudes as a 'forbidden' appendix to his work as an illustrator for light
magazines like Vanity Fair, a bit
like if they were secret erotic comics. The autobiography (in particular these
pages on his first discovery of a female nude), however, helps us to discover
an ever present inspiration in his life, which in the 1940s prevailed on the
social-political stream.
Here is the text:
George, still almost a child, went to visit a friend and, on the verge of
entering his house, discovered that he could secretly admire - through a crack
- the body of a woman who is undressing.
"In the meantime, the woman had opened her
blouse, and I gazed with delight into the heart-shaped cleavage. Her large,
full breasts were pressed upward by the fashionable corset of the period. They
lay like two ripe peaches in a basket, and the basket was decorated with lace,
in the manner of a fashionable fruit shop, because fashion decreed that a
chemise be worn under the corset. Now she took off her skirt. It fell like a
shell out of reach of the lamp into the circle of shade on the carpet. A
shimmering petticoat followed. It, too, sank onto the floor. They are like
skins, I thought, entranced by the sight of such bursting open.
My friend's aunt must have been about thirty-eight at
that time. She was a so-called stately woman, the type then preferred by men.
There was at first a little gossip when my friend's father brought her into his
house: she came from the big city and was better and more fashionably dressed;
that alone was enough to raise suspicion in our small Pomerian town. Nothing
specific was known; supposedly, she had had a love affair or something, but
that was only gossip, for nothing really was known. And her behavior was always
flawless, even towards us boys.
She was statuesque, of middle height, dark hair, not
really black, but dark. She wore it in braids around her head ... I stood
there, transfixed. Everything around me dissolved. My eyes were in that room.
She now stood in the light, half undressed. Those white batiste drawers with
the blue silk ribbon were long, all the way down to her knees. Though
generously cut, they fit tightly over her strong thighs. They were tied round
her waist with a band. I saw her robust calves in black stocking narrowing down
to high button shoes that seemed inordinately small.
I had never seen anything like this, had only
daydreamed of it. She leaned over, picked up the skirts from the floor, her
full womanly hips emphasized for a moment, tightly encased in white batiste -
and casually tossed them onto a chair.
Around me not a noise – had anybody come at this
moment, I would have been caught, so absorbed was I in fascinated observation.
She went to the washstand and returned. He untied something on his back; he
lifted his legs and slipped out of the drawers. Her chemise, a bit crumpled,
rustled down like a cascade. It was fairly long. She picked up the drawers and
put them by the skirts on the chair. Now she was standing in her chemise,
corset, and bodice. She took off the
bodice, revealing the tightly laced corset that pushed up rolls of flesh,
visible even under the voluminous chemise. Now she laid her arms over her
breasts and started to unhook the taped white stays of her corset; that took a
good deal of effort, I could almost hear her breathing. The top of the corset
broke open, releasing her large breasts were released, allowing them to gush
slightly downward of the beribboned top of her chemise.
The corset was placed with her other garments. She was
now in her chemise. She hesitated a little, raised her hand to her head as
though to smooth her hair, passed it down over her chemise: unconscious
movements, probably. Then she sat on the edge of the bed, pushing the black
dress aside, put her hand up to her head to pull out a large hairpin. Leaning
over and crossing her legs, she used it to unbutton her shoes. I could now look
into her décolleté and see her full breasts hanging like ripe fruit. She had
taken off her boots and rolled down her stockings. Only then did I notice that
she had been wearing garters. Her movements shifted the chemise a bit,
revealing the rosy flesh of her heavy thighs, where the garters had left marks.
The light fell fully onto her, there at the hedge of the bed. She stopped for a
moment, yawned again, passed her hands again over her chemise, and sat up. With
delight I noticed her breasts standing high under the white batiste, like little
mountains. Suddenly, she stood up, touched her armpits and, working with both
hands, wriggled out of her chemise.
Breathlessly I watched this soft, voluptuous, fully
developed female slowly emerging from the white shell. The very furniture in
the room seemed to participate in this spectacle. Did the chair not stretch its
back to see better? Did the lamp not seem to flicker? In breathless excitement
I absorbed it all. I was troubled, but enchanted. So this is what a woman looks
like! These two halves!
She turned away and displayed a gorgeous back. Delightedly
I contemplated the rosy, wide globes of her bottom with its funny little
dimples. I noticed the rolls of fat that voluptuous women often have, and with
happy surprise I discovered something dark, like a large furry heart, below her
lightly rounded bell.
She moved around quite naturally, for how she know
that anyone, let alone I, was watching her? She stretched, rubbed her body and
thigs, went to the mirror, raised her arms and started to let down her hair.
She had the same dark hair in the armpits. Like small oases were these tufts of
hair, in a large, smooth landscape of fleshy dunes, as though one could retire
here thirsty, to rest after wandering through the hot, large and small dunes.
She took hairpins out of her hair, keeping some in her mouth, laying others on
the table. She also put a sort of toupee there that women used to wear to make
their coiffure look rounder and higher. Her hair now snaked down and covered
half her back. She looked for a large hairpin that had fallen down, leaning
over and turning her back toward me. She did not immediately find it, and again
I saw that dark, heart-shaped something push forward between her thigs...
I felt feverish. I was shaken with excitement,
couldn’t tear myself away. It was enchantment. How was it possible for this
respectable bourgeois lady to suddenly produce such a totally different
impression? Was this metamorphosis? I hardly recognized my friend's aunt, the
way she moved around in her birthday suit. Something had peeled off with her
clothes. This was the fruit itself, the pure female gender complete with all
its attribute. It was full of curves, rosy white, brownish shades of flesh,
blue veins shining through white skin. I suddenly thought of a horse I had
seen, a whitish-yellow, fallow mare. Wasn’t her rump just like that? This was
my first experience with a naked woman, and it affected me to the marrow. It
was immense” [91]
NOTES
[46] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 226.
[47] George Grosz, The Years in America. 1933-1958 (quoted), p. 244.
[48] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 231.
[49] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 231.
[50] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 231-234.
[51] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 239.
[52] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 239.
[53] See: http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/kk1932/0287?sid=c3906b874b9e99b972614f5fffc038f0;
and http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/kk1932/0447?sid=c3906b874b9e99b972614f5fffc038f0.
[54] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 247.
[55] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 239-240.
[56] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 259.
[57] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 240.
[58] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 240.
[59] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 269.
[60] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 250.
[61] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 252.
[62] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 276-280.
[63] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 282.
[64] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 284-290.
[65] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 283.
[66] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 291-292.
[67] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 293-296.
[68] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 299.
[69] See: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-28956891.html.
[70] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 84.
[71] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. xix.
[72] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 97.
[73] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 149.
[74] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 152-153.
[75] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 13.
[76] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 84.
[77] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 85.
[78] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 84-85.
[79] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 97-98.
[80] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 108-109.
[81] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 245.
[82] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 201-219.
[83] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 69-75.
[84] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 142-147.
[85] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 153-157.
[86] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 161-182.
[87] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 261-271.
[88] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 21-29.
[89] George Grosz, The Years in America (quoted), p. 86.
[90] George Grosz, The Years in America (quoted), p. 27.
[91] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 24-29.
[54] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 247.
[55] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 239-240.
[56] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 259.
[57] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 240.
[58] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 240.
[59] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 269.
[60] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 250.
[61] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 252.
[62] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 276-280.
[63] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 282.
[64] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 284-290.
[65] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 283.
[66] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 291-292.
[67] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 293-296.
[68] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 299.
[69] See: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-28956891.html.
[70] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 84.
[71] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. xix.
[72] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 97.
[73] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 149.
[74] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 152-153.
[75] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 13.
[76] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 84.
[77] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 85.
[78] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 84-85.
[79] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 97-98.
[80] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 108-109.
[81] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 245.
[82] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 201-219.
[83] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 69-75.
[84] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 142-147.
[85] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 153-157.
[86] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 161-182.
[87] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 261-271.
[88] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), pp. 21-29.
[89] George Grosz, The Years in America (quoted), p. 86.
[90] George Grosz, The Years in America (quoted), p. 27.
[91] Grosz, George, An autobiography, (quoted), p. 24-29.
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