The Exile of George Grosz: Modernism, America, and the One World Order - Tapa dura

The Exile of George Grosz examines the life and work of George Grosz after he fled Nazi Germany in 1933 and sought to re-establish his artistic career under changed circumstances in New York. It situates Grosz's American production specifically within the cultural politics of German exile in the United States during World War II and the Cold War. Basing her study on extensive archival research and using theories of exile, migrancy, and cosmopolitanism, McCloskey explores how Grosz's art illuminates the changing cultural politics of exile. She also foregrounds the terms on which German exile helped to define both the limits and possibilities of American visions of a one world order under U.S. leadership that emerged during this period. This book presents Grosz's work in relation to that of other prominent figures of the German emigration, including Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht, as the exile community agonized over its measure of responsibility for the Nazi atrocity German culture had become and debated what Germany's postwar future should be. Important too at this time were Grosz's interactions with the American art world. His historical allegories, self-portraits, and other works are analyzed as confrontational responses to the New York art world's consolidating consensus around Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism during and after World War II. This nuanced study recounts the controversial repatriation of Grosz's work, and the exile culture of which it was a part, to a German nation perilously divided between East and West in the Cold War.

"McCloskey builds a complex picture of a market, political, and artistic situation through the lens of Grosz and his social world. This book is an exciting and significant new contribution not only to German art history, but also to the broad cultural analysis of World War II and the Cold War." Paul B. Jaskot, DePaul University

McCloskey beautifully employs the idea of Grosz’s exile from Nazi Germany as traumatic yet constitutive of a new, disruptive vision of Cold War universalism and exceptionalism in America. Skillfully interweaving Grosz’s and other exiles’ observations on the growing threats of fascism and war with deeply detailed readings of the artist’s key works, this narrative of three decades of American and European culture is wonderfully readable." Marion Deshmukh, George Mason University

"From the African American ghettos of Dallas to the modernist exhibitions of postwar Germany, McCloskey situates Grosz’s artworks and bruised ideals in relation to themes of wartime and postwar culture in both the United States and Germany, and she describes their relevance to present-day globalism and international conflict. These riveting and clear-headed interpretations distinguish McCloskey as one of the most compelling writers of art history working today." Keith Holz, Professor of Art History, Western Illinois University at Macomb

"Tightly argued and richly contextualized, this long-overdue reassessment of George Grosz’s years in American exile complicates prevailing accounts of postwar modernism in the context of American universalism and argues for the continued relevance of the exiles’ humanistic commitments to contemporary debates on America, democracy, and cosmopolitanism in a globalized world. Thoroughly researched and beautifully written. A major accomplishment." Sabine Hake, the University of Texas at Austin

This excellent study of George Grosz’s varied oeuvre over his years of exile reveals the complex textures of his émigré identity, affiliations, and differences in a period during which he negotiated not only the imperatives of the American art world but also the conflicted cultural politics of the exile community. In her honed articulation of these valences as well as those of Grosz’s reception in postwar Germany, McCloskey’s art historical writing is an exemplary model for future research.” Shulamith Behr, Courtauld Institute of Art

"In her new work, Barbara McCloskey offers a deeply nuanced, trenchantly argued investigation of one extraordinary artist driven from home by catastrophic events and settled precariously in a fragile transnational field of cultural luminaries, critical intellectuals, and political activists. This book is a model of engaged scholarship, and it makes a crucial and topical contribution not only to the histories of modern art and radical thought, but also to the understanding of the discursive construction and lived experience of emigration and exile." James A. van Dyke, University of Missouri, author of Franz Radziwill and the Contradictions of German Art History, 1919 1945