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Mar 18, 2013

Student (Costume Study for Goll's "Methusalem") (recto) Amalie, Ida, and Set Designs (Studies for Goll's "Methusalem") (verso)

1922

Part of a set. See all set records

George Grosz

(German, 1893–1959)

Germany, Berlin, 20th century

Pen and brown-black ink (applied with the aid of drafting tools) and watercolor

Sheet: 52.7 x 38 cm (20 3/4 x 14 15/16 in.)

Contemporary Collection of The Cleveland Museum of Art 1966.50

Location

not on view

Did you know?

George Grosz's interest in mechanization extended to his drawing practice: he used drafting tools, like a straight-edge and compass, to execute works such as this one.

Description

Student belongs to a series of drawings George Grosz made for Iwan Goll’s 1921 play Methusalem: The Eternal Bourgeois. This satirical drama pitted a radical student against Methusalem, a bourgeois capitalist. Grosz’s drawing shows the student’s costume; the actor would have spoken from behind a full-size, mask-like shield made from various machine parts and other commonplace objects. The hinged metal head reveals the inner workings of a corrupt or incompetent mind. In Grosz’s characterization, neither the radical student nor the bourgeois capitalist was more righteous than the other. Grosz was an outlier to Expressionism, rejecting the idea of the artist as mystical prophet in favor of the artist as an ordinary worker, an idea inspired by the socialist rhetoric of the day.

Inscriptions

Inscription

upper right, in graphite: 6; by artist upper left, in brown ink: Dort kann er knacken und klirren beim sprechen [sideways along edge]; by artist, upper left, near figure's shoulder, in brown ink: Dampf / beim sprechen / von Zeit zu Zeit / aufzischen; by artist, upper left, below previous inscription, in brown ink: Zähne gleich / alten / Klaviertasten; by artist, lower right in brown ink: Kopf Maske/aufgeklappt / großes Talglicht mit / aufmontierte elektr. Birne /als Licht, von beleuchter; by artist, lower right, in brown ink: Student [underlined twice]; by artist, lower right, below previous inscription: Füße Riesen/streichholz/schachteln; lower left, in graphite: 38; by artist, bottom right, in graphite: No ["o" underlined twice] 16) zu Goll "Methusalem"

Provenance

?-?

(Galerien Flechtheim, Berlin/Düsseldorf) ¹

?-1966

(Eugene Victor Thaw, New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH)

1966-

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

Provenance Footnotes

¹according to old label

Citations

Baur, John Ireland Howe. George Grosz. Exh. Cat. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1954. Mentioned: pp. 16-17, no. 36; Reproduced: p. 16

Rubin, William S. Dada and Surrealist Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1968. Mentioned: p. 88; Reproduced: plate 76

West, Richard. "Figure for Yvan Goll's Methusalem." Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 55, no. 4 (April 1968): 90-94. Mentioned: pp. 90-94; Reproduced: p. 91

Cleveland Museum of Art. Art of the Twentieth Century in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Dept. of Art History & Education, CMA, 1969. Mentioned: p. 3 archive.org

Ashton, Dore. "A Planned Coincidence." Art in America 57 (September-October 1969): 36-47. Mentioned and reproduced: pp. 40-41

Tendenzen der Zwanziger Jahre. Exh. Cat. Berlin: Akademie der Künste, 1977. Mentioned: p. 3, p. 261; Reproduced: p. 3, p. 51

Ades, Dawn. Dada and Surrealism Reviewed. Exh. Cat. London: Hayward Gallery, 1978. Mentioned: p. 94

Wohl, Helmut. DADA: Berlin, Cologne, Hannover. Exh. Cat. Boston: Institute of Contemporary Art, 1980. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 12, p. 26

Breitman, Ellen. Art and the Stage. Exh. Cat. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1981. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 29, no. 14

DeShong, Alan. The Theatrical Designs of George Grosz. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1982. Mentioned: p. 43; Reproduced: plate 14

Webb, Michael. "The Robots Are Here! The Robots Are Here!" Design Quarterly, no. 121 (1983): 4-21. Mentioned: p. 11; Reproduced: p. 10

Myers, Trent. Robots: History, Fantasy, & Reality. Exh. Cat. Madison, WI: Madison Art Center, 1985. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 3, insert

Taylor, Sue and Richard A. Born. The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1990. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 113

Cleveland Museum of Art, Diane DeGrazia, and Carter E. Foster. Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art in association with Rizzoli International Publications, New York, 2000. Mentioned: P. 246-47, 297; Reproduced: P. 247-248, cat. no. 104

Sims, Lowery Stokes. The Persistence of Geometry: Form, Content, and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2006. Mentioned and Reproduced: P. 65, no. 63

Exhibition history

George Grosz. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (January - February 1954).

Dada Revisited. Akron Art Museum (organizer).

Golden Anniversary of Acquisitions. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 10-October 16, 1966).

Tendencies of the Twenties. Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin 19, Germany (August 14, 1977-October 16, 1978); Städelsches Kunstinstitut im Städtischen Kunstinstitut Frankfurt am Main, Franfurt am Main, Germany (November 10, 1977-January 8, 1978).

Dada and Surrealism Reviewed. Hayward Gallery, London, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (January 11-March 27, 1978).

Dada Revisited. Akron Art Museum, Akron, OH (organizer) (June 30-September 15, 1978).

DADA: Berlin, Cologne, Hannover. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Boston, MA (November 5, 1980-January 4, 1981); Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX (March 3-April 19, 1981).

Art and the Stage. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 22-August 16, 1981).

Robots: History, Fantasy, & Reality. Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, WI (organizer) (December 1-January 19, 1985).

Cross Section: Graphic Art in Germany after the First World War. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 10, 1989-January 7, 1990).

Directions in Drawing II: The Human Figure. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 5, 1991-January 12, 1992).

The German Tradition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (April 27-June 27, 1993).

Graphic Discontent: German Expressionism on Paper. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (January 14-May 27, 2018).

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{{cite web|title=Student (Costume Study for Goll's "Methusalem") (recto) Amalie, Ida, and Set Designs (Studies for Goll's "Methusalem") (verso)|url=https://clevelandart.org/art/1966.50|author=George Grosz|year=1922|access-date=02 October 2023|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

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Student (Costume Study for Goll's "Methusalem") (recto) Amalie, Ida, and Set Designs (Studies for Goll's "Methusalem") (verso)

Student (Costume Study for Goll's "Methusalem") (recto) Amalie, Ida, and Set Designs (Studies for Goll's "Methusalem") (verso)

George Grosz

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Description

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Provenance Footnotes

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