GEORGE GROSZ: What if he went to the Philippines?

GEORGE GROSZ: What if he went to the Philippines?

Regarding his drawings and similarities with the Pilipino context 
by Lualhati Madlangawa-Guererro


 

Last time, this person borrowed a book entitled "George Grosz: Art and Politics in the Weimar Republic" by Beth Irwin Lewis. That book, upon reading it, tackles much of his life, not just totally about his profession, but also as an activist and a propagandist and lastly, a "saddest man on Europe" as what they described him.

But, As this writer continue reading his life and staring at the drawings, paintings and the like, especially during his Spartakusbund and the KPD days in the Weimar Republic, it somewhat mirrors the status of the Pilipino society both past and present as a rotten society. Calling it as corrupt, decadent, semi-feudal, semi-colonial, backward. And through the drawings and paintings Grosz made, for sure we may notice that it emphasizes societal criticism of the system in general, as well as in specific events indicated; as well as thinking that if George Grosz, the "saddest man on Europe" may have tried visiting the Philippines and analyzing the entire society for his works, perhaps he may have illustrated the conditions happened in the present as same as in the early days of the Deutsches Reich:

1.) Having a reformist president called the reactionary leaning military and police to quash the activists, radicals through force and deceit, the Mendiola and Hacienda Luisita massacres were quite similar to the events the Freikorps, being called by the moderate Ebert, done a series of massacres against the revolting peasants and workers during the early days of the German Republic.

2.) The extravagance of the Elite whilst the poor masses forced to content in their poverty, a feature of a rotten system the government neglected or if being given welfare, limited to a propaganda use treated as if a "charity."

3.) The degeneration of culture, controlled and regulated by the elite and the church, as well as the decadent lumpenproletariat and lumpenbourgeois, and lastly,

4.) The Putschists, military Adventurists, and wingnuts around creates similarities both the past-current status of the country and the events during the early and the middle years of the Weimar Republic-the Kapp putsch, the Beer hall putsch, and the former imperial generals surrounding the regime in general. The Philippines somehow shared the same experience of having mutinies, coups and wingnut-leaning military officers in the government.

These events, again are being depicted at Grosz's drawings and paintings regarding German life, and shows "nearly" similarities, if not carbon copies to the Pilipino society. And as this writer further reading the entire book, there also lies the strength of the people being drawn in his works creating a counterpart, a bloc against the system, and for sure we may likely to understand about it as what it speaks of in that work:

An avenging Proletarian

The worker's and peasant's army marching

Again, It also mirrors Pilipino life, both past and present, also in the works of a Weimar-era artist. Looks weird, but true as you may understand every scene being depicted, of orgies and of tragedies happened in our lives as an individual. Worse as we experience blood-sucking fools trying to enslave us and sucking all of our lives in a hell-like existence in a modern-day world, to the fact that the Philippines is a backward state!

And to with this writer's expectations would say that if Grosz may do so in visiting the Philippines, even in spirit may hath do the same as the pictures you've seen!