In yesterday's post we looked at egg inspirations (for today, Easter, and beyond), but sometimes an inspiration can lead you to rediscovering an artist and opening new research paths.
For example, the first picture in this post, entitled "Columbus' Egg" was taken by artist duo ringl + pit, childhood nicknames of avant-garde, entrepreneurial collaborative design and photography duo Grete Stern (ringl; 1904-1999) and Ellen Auerbach (pit; 1906-2004). These two female artists broke new ground in both commercial and fine art photography in Berlin during the '30s.
Stern and Auerbach first crossed paths in 1929 while serving as apprentices with the Berlin-based photographer and Bauhaus instructor Walter Peterhans. Peterhans' style emphasized sleek form and graphic design and his vision influenced in some ways Stern and Auerbach's style.
In 1930 the artists opened their own advertising photography studio under the name ringl + pit and soon became unconventional creative collaborators and romantic partners. The two artists were independent and confident women: both resisted the expectations of settling down and instead lived and worked in a shared studio space, while refuting conventional gender and sexuality norms and forging new ways of living and making art.
Together, Stern and Auerbach made advertisements and portraits, using their staged, humorous photographs to subvert the commodification of women in mainstream media and utilized their visual techniques to challenge traditional views of femininity.
Frequently incorporating mannequins, wigs, and other symbols of femininity, Stern and Auerbach sought to scrutinize the artifice and façade of feminine identity.
Their pioneering adverts focused on the power of the commercial goods and commodity represented not just as means to generate desire per se, but to contribute to the creation of one's self and one's identity.
Indeed, by fragmenting the feminine dimension in their adverts, the duo allowed many women to see themselves represented in those adverts.
At times, the duo also played with juxtapositions between mannequins and real women: in the advert for Pétrole Hahn, for example, their model is a lifeless mannequin, dressed in a frilly nightgown formerly owned by Auerbach's mother. The picture is disrupted by the unexpected appearance of a human hand holding a bottle of hair oil, emphasizing the artificiality of the image.
Another important point of their art was that, through their collaboration, Auerbach and Stern rejected the concept of the individual author: in later years, they reflected that it didn't matter who was in front of or behind the camera, as the image was made entirely together (you can bet that this concept of "collective paternity" of a work of art, or, in their case, of "collective maternity", will become more popular in future not just because in the creative arts there are numerous collectives, but considering also the use of Artificial Intelligence in art and fashion).
Auerbach and Stern closed their studio in 1933, as the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party forced the two Jewish, queer, avant-garde artists to flee their homeland. After they moved to different countries, they never worked together so closely again. Yet, the time may have come for a major rediscovery of the duo as next year is the 100th birth anniversary of Stern and the 20th death anniversary of Auerbach.
But let's close this post by going back to our egg inspiration: the title of the first image in this post, "Columbus's egg", refers to the eponymous expression hinting at a brilliant idea or an elegant solution to a seemingly difficult problem that actually reveals itself as simple or obvious. The phrase comes from a story about the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, who, after being challenged by his critics to explain the significance of his discovery of America, reportedly showed them an egg and asked them to make it stand on its tip. When they were unable to do so, Columbus tapped the egg on the table, created a flat bottom and made it stand upright.
In the history of visual arts many photographers and graphic designers were inspired by ringl + pit, and this particular image was evoked in two variant covers of Vogue Portugal's Columbs Egg issue (March 2021) that featured two versions of a collage with a model and an egg.
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