The Middle-Class Philistine Heartfield Gone Wild [Electro-Mechanical Tatlin Sculpture]
George Grosz and John Heartfield, The Middle-Class Philistine Heartfield Gone Wild [Electro-Mechanical Tatlin Sculpture], 1980 (Reconstruction of 1920 original)
The Middle-Class Philistine Heartfield Gone Wild is a multimedia sculpture constructed by Grosz and Heartfield. The work forces viewers to confront the reality of horrors inflicted by those involved in the First World War. The subject (the “Spiesser” or “Philistine,” represented here by a store-bought mannequin) is forcibly transformed by the world around him, as seen in the way that his body parts are replaced by fragments of the modern world such as the head by a light bulb and leg by a metal rod. In this work, Grosz and Heartfield indicated the way in which the world was changing those in it, forcing the audience to abandon their escapist art and reconcile with the transforming world in front of them.