Otto Dix, Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden, 1926 (Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris)

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Where is this painting?
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Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden is located at the Musée Nationale d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

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Where did Sylvia von Harden spend her time?
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Sylvia von Harden, along with her portraitist Otto Dix and dozens of other artists, writers and cultural elites embodied 1920s Berlin cafe culture. Depicted by Dix in the Romanisches Café, von Harden is seated at a small corner table, accompanied only by a drink and cigarettes. The artist imagines her as a solitary figure to enhance the sense of isolation and estrangement (she is, after all, an odd-looking creature).

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Things to look for: The Neue Frau in Weimar Germany
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Sylvia von Harden bears numerous "props" that signal her status as a Neue Frau (New Woman) of Weimar Germany. Her monocle is one of these props, and it has been stylized by Otto Dix so that its circular, black-rimmed lens seems to merge with von Harden's eye. Worn by various types of upper-class men in the later 19th century, monocles were affectations more than visual aids. (They were rarely worn by women of any class.)

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Things to look for: Fashion in the 1920s
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In Dix's portrait, Sylvia von Harden's short haircut is another symbol of the Neue Frau. Called the Bubikopf in Germany, this style is no-nonsense, and a complete defiance of long, "feminine" locks of hair. This style could be severe, as in von Harden's portrait, or more glamorous, as in Christian Schad's portrait of 1928 entitled Sonja. Regardless of its length, bobbed hair styles were popularized by movie stars, dancers, and fashion icons like Irene Castle, Louise Brooks, and Coco Chanel.

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Things to look for: Weimar Era Portraiture and Old Master painting
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Though Otto Dix was fascinated by the avant-garde characters that inhabited cafes in modern cities like Berlin, he relied on Old Master painting techniques to depict his sitters. In fact, Dix's portraits of oil on wood, multiple layers of paint and glazes, recall works by German painters like Hans Holbein the Elder, who was court painter to Henry VIII in the early 16th century.

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Things to look for: Otto Dix and Neue Sachlichkeit painting
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During the Weimar Era, avant-garde German artists such as Otto Dix painted with an increasingly realist style, called Neue Sachlichkeit. Most often translated to mean "New Objectivity," this approach to painting renewed the artist's focus on concrete facts, precise details, and everyday reality. They often turned this clinical gaze on themselves, in portraits like Dix's Self-Portrait with Easel, from 1926.

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Channels: Painting
Artists: Otto Dix
Themes: IdentityPeopleTime

A prototypical Neue Sachlichkeit portrait by German painter Otto Dix (1891-1969) depicting the journalist Sylvia von Harden, a habitue of Berlin's famed Romanisches Cafe. Dix's critical realism verges on a caricature of the Neue Frau in the Weimar Era, while his style of oil painting and attention to physical details serve to heighten the character's individuality in this fascinating image.

Speakers: Dr. Juliana Kreinik, Chad Laird

Marvelous portrait. The Monocle has many meanings but can be an encoded lesbian trope for seeing the world differently. The American expatriate painter Romaine Brooks used it in her portrait of Una Troubridge and certainly M. Dietrich wore one as did many bi-sexual and Neue Frau between the wars. Your take is interesting. All of this will be discussed in my forthcoming book All or Nothing: A Critical Study of Romaine Brooks--see http://www.Romainebrooks.com
Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Cassandra on Thu, 10/07/2010 - 09:17.
I just saw this work in Musee 'dOrsay and I enjoyed it a lot. It's a fantastic portrait. Thanks for this interesting intruction to this painting.
Anonymous's picture
Submitted by ann meijer on Mon, 08/23/2010 - 12:35.

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