"I have always wanted to be just a pair of eyes, walking through the world unseen, just to see others." - Jeanne Mammen.The graphic works of Jeanne Mammen (1890-1976) deserve a place next to those of her fellow artists George Grosz and Hannah Hoche. Although Mammen's career spanned several decades and styles, it is her representations of the self-confident, erotically provocative, and fashionable women of the 1920s that caught my attention.
For her pictures of social relationships, Mammen chose to work in the Expressionist style. Her empathy for women showsitself in her choice of subects: women in clubs or at parties, with men or dancing with other women, smoking, drinking, walking alone at night - in short, testing the outer limits of emancipation.
There is exhileration shading into anxiety in these works. Kurt Tucholsky, editor of the liberal review Die Weltbuhne (The World Stage) praised Mammen's illustrations in glowing terms: "In the delicatessan shop, which is unlocked to us weekly or monthly by your employers, you are about the only delicacy."
The Mammen family moved from Berlin to to Paris for business reasons when Jeanne was five. She an
d her sister Marie (see sketch) both studied at the Academie Julian; Jeanne continued her studies at the Royal Academy in Brussels and at t
he School of the Villa Medici in Rome.
At twenty-three, Mammen took part in her first exhibition with Les Independents in Brussels.
Moving 
back to Berlin in 1916, Mammen illustrated books (including The Temptation Of St. Anthony by Flaubert and The Gold Pot by E.T.A. Hoffmann) in the symbolist style. She worked for many popular magazines during the Weimar Period, including Jugend, Die Dame, and Der Jungeselle. She also designed posters for Berlin filmmakers; The Flaneure (1928) was published at the time Marlene Dietrich starred in the film, The Blue Angel. 
back to Berlin in 1916, Mammen illustrated books (including The Temptation Of St. Anthony by Flaubert and The Gold Pot by E.T.A. Hoffmann) in the symbolist style. She worked for many popular magazines during the Weimar Period, including Jugend, Die Dame, and Der Jungeselle. She also designed posters for Berlin filmmakers; The Flaneure (1928) was published at the time Marlene Dietrich starred in the film, The Blue Angel. 
In 1930, the art publisher Fritz Gurlitt offered Mammen the chance to illustrate of new edition of Pierre Louys' Les Chanson de Bilitis, a collection of erotic prose poems inspired by the ancient Greek courtesan Sappho. Lesbianism and other 'degenerate' themes made it impossible for Mammen to exhibit or sell her work after the National Socialists seized power in 1933.
For more, visit http://www.jeanne-mammen.de/
2 comments:
Gosh, Jane, you keep on finding new artists I've never come across. Mammen is obviously influenced by Grosz, but the watercolours are even more like Pascin, I think. And then you get a cubist influence too. Do you know what happened to her after the Nazis took power? You don't show any later work, yet she lived till 1976.
According to a website devoted to her work, Mammen retreated from public life when the Nazis made it impossible for her to exhibit. She continued to work and cycled through a series of styles. To my eyes, the later work suggests that she became a bit of a lost soul. I couldn't pretend to do justice to an artist in one article, so I usually concentrate on something that makes a coherent story for me. Someday I want to do a piece about Carl Moll; I think his work is too easily dismissed because his actions in the 1930s were so craven. Mammen, though, seems to have brought her ideas into her art, at least concerning sexuality and women's lives, and they speak to a new generation. As I've mentioned before, if I could take a vacation I wouldn't have to think so much!
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