More Beautiful (and Tragic) Rabbit Holes: Art From Pre-WWII
It started with one fetching painting, and led to a mimi art & war lesson.
Dear Beautiful Friends,
The Bathers captured my attention this week. I saw it posted on Instagram, gasped at the bold modernist composition, the way it so beautifully and simultaneously says Fuck You and Hey, Where’d You Get Your Suit? Anything with swimmers is going to capture my attention.
This stunner is by a Mexican painter and muralist, Joe Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro, and dated 1937, two short years before WWII broke out in Europe.
I swim a lot, adore swimsuit fashion (focusing on workout suits), and own more swimsuits than pants. I probably browse swimsuits on the web as much as I browse art. But then, what’s the difference?
Hey Speedo, Jolyn—how about a one-piece with this artfully designed back?
Art & Pre/War
In the mid-90s, I spent the week between Christmas and New Year’s visiting friends in London. During that trip, we saw an exhibit that toured us through pre/WW II through the lens of art propaganda from fascist countries (a lot of sports and fitness work!).
The show pointed out how and where the artists, suppressed by their governments, tucked little swatches of resistance into the art and design. This was their way of sticking it to their censorial dictators, while also generating a secret language (code?) among like-minded citizens.
There was something about the style of our Mexican bathers that reminded me of the Art & War exhibit, so: Off I went, diving down a little rabbit hole on the topic of, art and propaganda made in 1937, leading up to WWII.
Come this way, we’re going to dive into a few finds from 1937.
1. Le Drapeau Noir (The Black Flag) by René Magritte
From the witty surrealist who brought us “The Son of Man,” “This is Not a Pipe” and other familiar works —>
—> is this eerie piece from three years before the Germans occupied his native Brussels, and the same year as the bombing of Guernica.
I’d never seen this one before, have you?
Here’s what Magritte had to say about his Black Flag:
“[This work] gave a foretaste of the terror which would come from flying machines, and I am not proud of it.”
“My painting [referring to all his paintings] is visible images which conceal nothing. They evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, ‘What does it mean?’ It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable.”
I can imagine Magritte as someone you’d get a kick out of at a dinner party for a while, because he’d also probably talk and talk your ear off until you were desperate for a quick exit.
2. The Paris World Fair, aka The International Exposition of Art and Technology in Modern Life — May - November 1937
Et, voila! In this photo, on either side of the Eiffel Tower, are two pavilions: the Nazi German pavilion on the left, with a figure on the roof, and the Soviet pavilion on the right with the exalted-looking sculpture.
Want a closer look?
The Soviet pavilion (of Stalin times):
The Nazi German pavilion:
Two years after the expo, Germany attacked Poland, and World War II was underway.
On a more inspiring note, here’s a list of women artists at the Paris expo:
1937: The Year for Women Artists in Paris
Check out Maruja Mallo—I’ve sneaked this one in below, but click here and delight yourself. I might add one to my collection.
3. Last stop on the Rabbit Hole Art tour: World War II soviet posters.
Here’s one of the “prettier” posters from the Soviet posters list. I liked this one because of the juicy red plane, its cute wings and flipper feet, its cheerfully raised “head” (propeller), proud like a child. My senses also enjoy the cherry red against the cornflower blue. This is the trickster nature of beauty. Even though the context is not beautiful (war), some of the content is.
That’s three, so let’s leave it there.
What grabbed your intrigue or curiosity? Did you have a favorite, or a stand-out surprise?
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Love this article T. Images are so provocative and, combined with the revealing of history we rarely get a glimpse into, I was hooked. More please!
Tatyana, first, those images are fantastic--every one. It's so weird you found propaganda art. I'm in a research methods class right now and we're researching the subreddit r/PropagandaPosters, an online community that posts only propaganda artifacts, each submission with a plain caption, and then people discuss. From all times (I've seen stuff back to the revolutionary war) and places. You should check it out. Super interesting. Thanks for the pretty and weird coincidence!