Mad Square

Thanks to all those who attended the exhibition. You were given a worksheet with some questions on it. Use that to form your blog entry for the Critical Diary. We're almost at the end of semester, so well done everyone, there are just two submissions left - we will talk more about the Critical Diary as well as the Design Article in class.

Worksheet

The exhibition manages to showcase a whole moment in German 20th Century art spanning three decades. Keep in mind as you make your way through the exhibition the relevance it may have for the history of design as well as for, specifically, graphic design.

1. From where does the title of the exhibition come?

2. The period covered in the exhibition is from 1910 to 1937. Create a simple timeline of a number of political events that happened over this period. What is significant about the period of the Weimar Republic?

3. The exhibition also covers a diverse range of art and design media from print, painting, and posters to industrial design, photography and cinema. Please list 3 examples of works of different media. Note down the title, date and artist of the work and list some points about how the chosen media of each work fits into the narrative of the exhibition and how it evokes meaning and feeling.

4. The ambivalent experience of city life is one of the main themes of the exhibition. Make a note of at least 3 works which deal with these themes in different ways. Identify them, write a few sentences about how these themes are represented or explored. Also provide a rich description of the feeling that the work evokes in you, also considering the context of its surroundings. What are some the other themes of the exhibition? Note at least two.

5. Choose one major work in the exhibition, for example, Max Beckmann’s ‘The Trapeze’ or George Grosz’s ‘Suicide’, or a work by Hannah Hoch or the movie, ‘Metropolis’. Why did you choose it? What effect did it have on you as a viewer? Pay attention to formal qualities as well as theme and content.