[...]But that which can be destroyed in theseworks attaches itself to us,burdens us,robs us
of the courage to act.Therefore:off yougo! [...]Cut down the old idols! In the name of the
coming proletarian culture!²⁰Seiwert’sannouncement ofanew proletarian culture proved premature, with the
revolutionary enthusiasm of the postwaryears soon giving waytothe disillu-
sionment of the stabilization period.Fullyinlinewith his contribution to the
Kunstlumpdebate,a1921article inFranz Pfemfert’sDieAktionstillrepeated
the assertion that art is onlyproletarian“when contentandform are proletarian”
and when bothsupport the building of class consciousness.²¹Yetinthe end, the
hegemonyofthe bourgeoisie and its corrosive effect on working-class culture
proved too formidable an obstacle.“There is no proletarian art,”Seiwert conced-
ed in 1925,the sameyear he completedDemonstrationand twoyears after the
antiproletarianmanifesto published by van Doesbergand others:
Because art is the expression ofaculture, the visible intensification ofafeelingoflife. And
the proletariat has no culture. [...]The proletariat will never have its own culture, for the
concept of the proletariat is inseparablytied to the concept of the capitalist economy.
With its disappearance,the proletariat disappears,makingroom for the classless society
that bringsforth its own unique,incomparable culture.²²Seiwert’sexperiments with figuration and abstraction in the service of proletar-
ian identifications foundalogical continuation in Gerd Arntz’sBildstatistik(pic-
torial statistics) and hisvery similar approach to figuration, abstraction, and
emotion.Working under the unique circumstances that produced the ambitious
social and architectural programs known as RedVienna,Arntz ended up creat-
ingaminimalist languageofpictograms, later called Isotypes, or the Interna-
tionalSystem ofTypographic Picture Education.²³In Cologne, Arntz had made
Seiwert,“Das Loch inRubens Schinken,”DieAktion10.29/30(1920): 418.
Seiwert,“Offener Brief an den Genossen A.Bogdanow!,”DieAktion11.27/28(1921): 373.
Seiwert,“Zeichen—Versuch derAufzeichnungeiner dialektischen Entwicklunginder Dar-
stellung des Gesichtes derWelt,”DieAktion15.9/10and 11/12(1925): 313.Republished as“Die
Kunst und das Proletariat,”Die proletarische Revolution2.16 (1927), together with the linocut“Er-
kenntnis derWelt treibt zur Änderung derWelt.”Arevisedversion of the article,“DieKultur und
das Proletariat,”appeared inAbis Z. Organ der Gruppe Progressiver Künstler Köln21 (1932),
83 – 84.
Foranintroduction, see Christopher Burke,Eric Kindel, andSueWalker, eds.,Isotype: De-
sign and Contexts 1925– 1971 (London:Hyphen Press,2013). On the connection to workers’edu-
cation initiatives, see Flip Bool,“Fi gurativerKonstruktivismus und kritische Grafikvon1924bis
1971,”inArbeiterbildung in der Zwischenkriegszeit,ed. Friedrich Stadler(Vienna: Löcker, 1982),
219 – 216.
218 Chapter 11