Manekinen (Mannequins, 1934)
Manekinen collection is a subtle and ironic criticism of the state of society – the world of goods and advertising where objects become autonomous, mass produced, alienated from human agency. The border between what is real and what is represented (in the shopping windows) is blurred – women in public spaces resemble the mannequins in the shopping windows, not the other way round. Mannequins are the walking dolls in the street, and people feel more mechanic than their copies. The commodities shout at you, they want to seduce you and want you to look like themselves.
Vogel speaks of the visual spectacle of commodity and of the role of women in public sphere – emancipated women are now allowed to walk the streets but they are subjected to logic of capitalism and mass produced fashion. They depend on this and loose their independence.
While walking the streets of Lviv during our Summer research trip, we were drawn to the orchids in the windows wherever we went. Those omnipresent orchids and mannequins in Lviv of 2016 made us reflect on Vogel’ Lviv of 1934.
While at the university Debora Vogel wrote German poetry, but gradually became familiar with Yiddish literature and began to write in that language encouraged by her friend and colleague Rachel Auerbakh. She became active in Yiddish literary circles and wrote articles for various local Yiddish and Polish journals. She collaborated in the Lwów Yiddish journal of literature and art Tsushtayer (1929–1931), contributing a two-part essay on the art of Marc Chagall and other art reviews, besides her own poems and essays on poetry.
Vogel published two books of Yiddish poetry — Tog-Figurn (Day-Figures, 1930) and Manekinen (Mannequins, 1934), and a book of short sketches, Akatsyes Bliyen (Acacias Bloom, 1935) in both Polish and Yiddish. Her poems, prose and essays appeared in in the New York Introspectivist monthly journal Inzikh (1936, 1937, 1938) and in the quarterly Bodn (1937).
Tog-figurn collection is an example of literary Cubism with its characteristic play of contours, colours and geometrical figures, like, for instance, lines of the “grey rectangle” that stands in for the monotony of modern cityscapes. These “stylistic attempts” transition into the Constructivism of Manekinen, the reflections of the “decorative and consumption-oriented worldview”, where on the streets of Paris, Berlin or Lviv a person transforms into a mannequin, a half-mechanical, half-live decoration, combining a “machinic-mechanical basis” of life with “live matter”.
Links
yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Vogel_Dvora
jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/fogel-dvoyre
yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Oyerbakh_Rokhl
jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/auerbakh-rokhl
