Progress

For several years we have had a totally useless central heating controller, which was impossible to use properly and the manual of instructions for which was incomprehensible.  Each year, when we have the system serviced, the engineer would see the controller and say something along the lines of " oh no, not one of those ******* useless things. Today, a miracle: we've had it replaced with a new system that controls the heating via wifi from our phones.

The Neue Sachlichkeit or "New Objectivity" artists were a primarily German group who reacted against the abstraction and rebellion of the Cubism, Dada etc. Their work created images mostly of groups of people, with analytical detachment and often scorn.

One of their leaders was George Grosz, a Berliner and, for a time, a Communist who turned to oil painting "to show the oppressed the true faces of their masters."  A typical example of this was The Pillars of Society (1926) porting a Nazi, a Nationalist, a Social Democrat, a Judge and a militarist. I wonder who he would paint today.