Strój ludowy jako nośnik nastrojów społecznych w międzywojennej twórczości wybranych malarzy austriackich

Abstract

The article addresses the issue of the role of clothing in the construction of a message with a specific content/sound by selected artists creating in the interwar period in Austrian regions such as East Tyrol. The artists associated with expressionism and modernism referred in different ways to the political and social situation of the time. The purpose of the article includes pointing out the reasons why painters reached for the theme of regional, folk or peasant costume, and outlining the scheme in which it was combined with the content of artistic expression and the message. The article singles out the work of Albin Egger-Lienz, whose story provides an interesting example of the determinants of motif choices in painted images, and shows how, among others, the issue of clothing can affect the subsequent reception of artistic output.

The article, prepared on the basis of museum searches and the literature, concludes that peasant, folk motifs are often found in situations where accents of primordialism, the rhythm of nature and work in harmony with nature, tradition, family and native values are desirable. The choice of costumes/clothes associated with the regions and the countryside accompanies political, labor and popular upheavals, and may also appear in threatening situations. In the case of expressionist currents, especially in artists working in the regions, they can emphasize the power of the message, including by stressing the truthfulness of behavior and the power of nature, which determines the natural order. Peasant accents, including folk costume, are then often combined with religious motifs. However, regional clothing, rural and landscape themes can also accompany art during periods of conflict and provide a kind of refuge from the oppression of the world or signal an ominous “calm before the storm.”

A problem that is also outlined here is the issue of the reception of peasant/folk dress in a country that had ties to Nazism, and as a result, the issue of dress is linked to the cultural policies of the state promoted at the time, sometimes in accordance with the expectations of the artists, but sometimes also by chance and the superimposition of various circumstances, which affects the evaluation of the artists themselves and their works.