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Lot Essay
Karl Hubbuch's Im Tanzlokal is a striking social portrait from the latter half of the 1920s. Like Otto Dix's great triptych Metropolis of 1928, Im Tanzlokal represents a cross-section of 1920s society intermingling at a local dance club. Like many other Neue Sachlichkeit artists of the period, Hubbuch is not interested in depicting the personalities of the figures who populate his canvases, but rather in depicting specific types. In Im Tanzlokal four unequal couples are shown dancing, each figure a distorted caricature who collectively form a cohesive group that reads like a carnival parade of the grotesque.
Throughout the 1920s Germany, and in particular Berlin, was gripped by a dance fever that lasted throughout the years of the Weimar Republic and has come to characterise much of the period known as "the golden twenties." All through the traumatic post-war years of hyper inflation, economic turmoil and rising political unrest, the people of Berlin threw themselves into a dance craze with all the frenzy of the condemned. In Im Tanzlokal Hubbuch coldly observes this "dancing on the edge of a volcano" by depicting the raw and ugly reality of the scene as these grotesque and seemingly possessed figures cling to one another to dance their troubles away. None of Hubbuch's anxious figures is shown looking at his or her partner but rather is lost in their own isolated and seemingly aggressive thoughts.
Overlooking the jostling dancers is the arrogant figure of an aristocrat seated at his table in his high collar, sniffily observing the room while smoking a cigar. His gaunt features, powdered face and the dark shadows under his eyes, however, also identify him as an integral part of this urban dance of life.
Throughout the 1920s Germany, and in particular Berlin, was gripped by a dance fever that lasted throughout the years of the Weimar Republic and has come to characterise much of the period known as "the golden twenties." All through the traumatic post-war years of hyper inflation, economic turmoil and rising political unrest, the people of Berlin threw themselves into a dance craze with all the frenzy of the condemned. In Im Tanzlokal Hubbuch coldly observes this "dancing on the edge of a volcano" by depicting the raw and ugly reality of the scene as these grotesque and seemingly possessed figures cling to one another to dance their troubles away. None of Hubbuch's anxious figures is shown looking at his or her partner but rather is lost in their own isolated and seemingly aggressive thoughts.
Overlooking the jostling dancers is the arrogant figure of an aristocrat seated at his table in his high collar, sniffily observing the room while smoking a cigar. His gaunt features, powdered face and the dark shadows under his eyes, however, also identify him as an integral part of this urban dance of life.