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At first look, “Porzellan Manufaktur Allach,” Robert Russell’s present solo exhibition at Anat Egbi Gallery in Los Angeles (on by April 22), is an in depth examine of cuteness. However after spending extra time together with his giant, auratic work of porcelain animals—and studying their backstory—the shiny fawns, bunnies, lambs, and puppies reveal a darkish underbelly. All of those objets d’artwork had been made through the Nazi regime by pressured laborers within the Dachau focus camp. Heinrich Himmler, among the many principal architects of the Holocaust, oversaw their manufacturing, calling porcelain “one of many few issues that give me pleasure.” Russell doesn’t rid the collectible figurines of their shiny, saccharine allure, however beneath his gaze, they tackle new life. Transposed from a miniature scale to a monumental one, and from porcelain into paint, these topics are alchemized from kitsch into artwork, like golems formed from the clay of their darkish historical past.
DURING THE PANDEMIC, I accomplished a collection of work of porcelain teacups based mostly on photos that I had discovered on eBay, posted by individuals promoting their grandparents’ wares, et cetera. That challenge prompted me to do extra analysis on porcelain. Individually, I had been doing a variety of studying on the Holocaust. Positive sufficient, the story of porcelain immediately dovetailed with Nazi historical past.
Many of the teacups I had been portray had been made at a manufacturing facility in Meissen, Germany, close to Dresden. It’s the oldest still-operating producer of porcelain on this planet. I noticed {a photograph} of Heinrich Himmler—the highest commander of the Nazi Schutzstaffel, who oversaw all of its genocide packages, together with the focus camps—visiting the Meissen manufacturing facility in 1933. Himmler was obsessive about German folklore and Aryan mysticism, and apparently he commissioned the manufacturing facility to begin producing collectible figurines. The SS administration would award these porcelain trinkets to their troopers and officers on particular events. Little vignettes, Fragonard-y tableaux, woodland creatures, idyllic peasant figures in lederhosen, stuff like that.
In 1936, Himmler took Third Reich funds to buy a porcelain manufacturing facility in Allach, a small city close to Munich. Allach Porcelain enlisted high porcelain artists, and its output grew fairly quickly. When the manufacturing outgrew that manufacturing facility, Himmler moved the corporate to a bigger facility close to the Dachau focus camp and used the prisoners as laborers for nearly a decade. That’s when the story simply will get uncontrolled, so far as I’m involved. It’s simply completely outrageous.
The Nazi Social gathering was a really aesthetic motion. They had been extraordinarily attentive to graphic design, structure, and crafting a lexicon of symbols and motifs to help their ideology. Porcelain was well-suited to the Nazi ethos, as a result of it’s all about purity and whiteness. They weren’t enthusiastic about something avant-garde; their whole horrific challenge was about wanting again to some mythic previous. They had been waging an unlimited mechanized struggle whereas fantasizing about Lebensraum—“residing area”—turning all of Europe into German countryside. I think about that’s why Allach was making so many pastoral and forest animal collectible figurines.
The entire photos I used as sources for my work are from European struggle memorabilia public sale web sites. These public sale homes are a far cry from Sotheby’s or Christie’s and have lengthy, German names. The collectible figurines are very, very costly: like twenty to thirty thousand bucks. I needed to accumulate one simply to deal with it, to see what its bodily presence was like. However I didn’t wish to spend the cash—nor might I—and I actually don’t wish to take part in that market. I’ve consequently by no means seen one in every of these Allach porcelain figures in particular person.
One of many ways in which I’m fascinated by these work is that I’m turning these collectible figurines into Jewish objects. As a Jew who’s partaking with this historical past and responding to it, I think about these work Jewish artworks. I wish to think about that, if somebody had been to analysis Allach porcelain now, they might encounter my work. I wish to embed myself within the story and make it one in every of Jewish reclamation.
We consider porcelain as being bone-white, however in fact, these shiny collectible figurines soak up no matter colours are round them. Most of them had been photographed towards a impartial grey backdrop to keep away from any coloration. However I didn’t need the work to seem like they had been caught within the World Conflict Two period, like distant historic artifacts. The collectible figurines nonetheless exist, and I believed they need to seem extra ethereal, like ghosts. I used a number of alizarin crimson, a colour that has been an obsession of mine for a very long time. It has unimaginable vary—you may pull so many deep and lightweight hues out of its pigment. It’s additionally very bodily. Once you squeeze the paint out of the tube, it appears to be like like deep crimson blood. But it surely’s primarily pink, and I took some enjoyment of portray Nazi artifacts as these apparitions in pink and Prussian blue.
Scale was essential. The objects are just some inches tall, however these work wanted to be a lot bigger than life. They should scream their cuteness at you. In some way that cuteness brings their brutality to the fore. They slowly remodel into the monsters they are surely. I wanted that horror to be a bodily expertise for the viewer, moderately than strictly an mental one. It’s one factor to study the historical past, however fully one other to really feel it on a deeper stage, past what phrases can specific.
— As instructed to Juliana Halpert
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