less, their original experiments with the enduringpower of figuration within the
framework of abstraction offer an important corrective to the conventional asso-
ciationofproletarian identificationswith realistic paradigms and of political
emotionswith figurative practices.¹⁶
Notwithstanding their commitment,asmodernists, to abstraction as an em-
poweringcognitive principle, the Cologne Progressivesinsisted thatfiguration,
with its groundinginreferentiality,remained the most promisingstrategy for
reachingradicalizedworkers and advancingaproletarian culture. Convinced
of the liberatingpotential ofmodernism, they setout to develop aesthetic, polit-
ical, and emotional alternativestothe two prevailing modes of engagement with
the workingclass: the mixture of humor and sentimentality that turned the pro-
letarian lifeworld intoamodernidyll (HeinrichZille) and the ethics of suffering
thatpermeatednaturalistandrealistdepictionsoftheurbanunderclass(Käthe
Kollwitz, HansBaluschek). Searching for amiddle ground betweenabstraction
and figuration, Seiwert and his colleagues rejected the ecstatic pathos of expres-
sionism and playful nihilism of Dada as corresponding manifestations of bour-
geois individualism.Yetthey also sought to distinguish their visual style from
the cool detachment of New Objectivity,which they sawasasign of politicalres-
ignation. Their shared interest in establishing forms and practicesofproletarian
modernism outside the restrictive modern-traditional, and innovative-conven-
tional binaries is especiallyevident in the ways Seiwert,Hoerle, and Arntz utilize
elements from advertising and poster design in their approachto text-imagere-
lationships in the woodcuts and advancethe didactic and agitational qualities of
print media(posters,fliers) through the engagement with medieval religious and
regional folk art.¹⁷
The Cologne Progressivesdiagnosed the deindividualization and dehuman-
ization of the workers through formal (rather than affective) means and turned a
resultofcapitalist exploitation (i.e., massification) intoapowerful weapon in
the struggle of the revolutionary workingclass. The attendant process of depsy-
See Dirk Backes,HeinrichHoerle, Leben undWerk 1895– 1936 (Cologne:Rudolf Habelt,1981).
This point can be illustrated throughacomparison to thewoodcuts in the MexicanjournalEl
Machete,asexamined inJohn Lear,Picturing the Proletariat: Artists and Labor in Revolutionary
Mexico,1908– 1940 (Austin: University ofTexas Press,2017), chapter3.Similar connections be-
tween local folk traditions and an internationalist cultural leftism characterize the proletarian
art ofJapan andKorea, as examined by Heather Bowen-Struyk,“Proletarian Arts in East
Asia: Quests for National, Gender and ClassJustice,”inPositions:East Asia Cultures Critique
14.2 (2006): 251 – 278. Foranother example for the productive alliances among counterhegemonic
positions across the modern-traditional, North-South divides,see Barbara McCloskey’sreading
of the Peruvian artistJosé Carlos Mariátegui in“TheFace of Socialism: George Groszand José
Carlos Mariátego’sAmauta,”ThirdText22.4 (2008): 455 – 465.
Franz Wilhelm Seiwert’sCriticalEmpathy 215