Dix und die Gegenwart

Deichtorhallen Hamburg are preparing a large-scale exhibition on Otto Dix and his continuing influence on art today. Presented in the Deichtorhallen's Hall for Contemporary Art, the show is scheduled to run from September 30, 2023 to February 25, 2024. For the first time, Dix's oeuvre from the Nazi era will be examined in the context of a comprehensive exhibition. Accordingly, the artistic impact of political censorship, conformity and political iconography with reference to contemporary art will take center stage. Starting out from his radical and provocative - and to this day popular - paintings of the 1920s, Otto Dix (1891-1969) went on to create an ostensibly apolitical body of work after 1933, whose visual language was far less aggressively critical of society. During the Nazi era, his previously striking depictions of German society morphed into partly subversive, partly subtle forms of contemporary social critique. Images of war and socio-critical milieu studies gave way mainly to landscapes, commissioned portraits and, from 1937 on, Christian allegorical subjects. To date, the work Otto Dix created during the Nazi era has taken a backseat in exhibitions and research – a lack of attention the exhibition DIX AND THE PRESENT aims to redress.

To appreciate Dix's artistic genres of landscape, portraits and his Christian subjects in a contemporary political context, the exhibition looks at the painter, his work and artistic career against the backdrop of art politics during the Weimar Republic, National Socialism and the immediate post-war period. The artistic reception of Dix in terms of subject matter, political iconography, style as well as technical and genre-specific issues is a second focus of DIX AND THE PRESENT. The exhibition reveals the shifting cultural and social parameters in the reception of Dix's oeuvre, while at the same time showing how his work continues to hold great fascination for about fifty of the world's most renowned artists of our day - as challenge or stimulus, by means of appropriation and reinterpretation. Yael Bartana, Monica Bonvicini, Marc Brandenburg, John Currin, Alice Neel, Nicolas Party, Cindy Sherman, Katharina Sieverding and Kara Walker are among the artists included. The exhibition is curated by Dr. lna Jessen. The project benefits from her in-depth knowledge on the subject of Otto Dix during the Nazi era and the concept for the exhibition is based on her research and publication A GERMAN PAINTER. OTTO DIX AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM (De Gruyter, 2022). lt examines artistic upheavals rooted in prevailing public policy and socio-political developments.