EXPRESSIONISM- NEO-PLASTICISM (De Stijl)- SURREALISM
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04.12.2012 ART IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: EXPRESSIONISM- NEO-PLASTICISM (De Stijl)- SURREALISM Week 9 Expressionism In Germany, a group known as Expressionists insisted art should express the artists feelings rather than images of the real world. The belief that the artist could directly convey some kind of inner feeling- - emotional or spiritual- - through art was a fashionable idea in German artistic and intellectual circles at the beginning of the twentieth century. Artists had been encouraged to ‘break free’ from civilized constraints and Academic conventions and somehow express themselves more freely; these ideas are fundamental to what we call German ‘Expressionist’ art. From 1905 to 1930, Expressionism the use of distorted, exaggerated forms and colors for emotional impact dominated German art. This subjective trend, which is the foundation of much twentieth century art, began with Van Gogh, Gauguin and Munch in the late nineteenth century, and continued with Belgian painter James Ensor (1860-1849), and Austrian painters Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), Egon Schiele (1890- 1918), and Oscar Kokoschka (1886-1980). But it was in Germany, with two separate groups Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter, the Expressionism reached maturity. Die Brücke: Founded in 1905 by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880- 1938) Der Blaue Reiter: Founded in Munich around 1911 by Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944). 1 04.12.2012 DIE BRÜCKE (BRIDGE): BRIDGING THE GAP • Die Brücke founded by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880- 1938) • Members include Ernst Ludwig in 1905. Kirchner (1880–1938), Erich • The aim was to sieze avantgarde spirit. Heckel (1883–1970), and Emil • Members believed their work would be a “bridge” to the Nolde (1867–1956). future. • Its credo is: “to attract all revolutionary and fermenting • Unlike the French avant-garde, elements is the purpose implied in the name Brücke.” Expressionists privilege the • Dissolved in 1913 artist's inner emotional state, • Artists lived and worked communally, first in Dresden then in focusing on the anxieties of Berlin, producing intense anguished pictures with harshly modern life and taboo subjects distorted forms and clashing colors. such as sexuality, expressed in bright, unnatural colors and • Their major contribution was a revival to the graphic arts, distorted forms. especially woodcut. • Their major subject was the sickness of the soul. • The means to express this sickness were dramatic arrangement of black and white contrasts, crude forms, and jagged lines in woodcuts. Die Brücke artists attempt to challenge or rework the constrictions of the culture in which they lived: Influence of Friedrich Nietzsche: Existentialist philosopher who challenged bourgeois norms of aesthetics, religion, etc., urged the creative power of the individual in forms of expression and meaning (writings span c. 1870 and 1880s). For Nietzsche ‘modernity’ (the modern world) was decadent and needed to be overcome by the creative individual. Notion of the ‘Obermensch’ (‘Superman’) who has overcome the powers of decadence. Note: Nietzsche addresses his remarks solely to men, whom he sees as agents of cultural change. Die Brücke probably took their name from Nietzsche’s Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) in which he writes of man’s spirit as the bridge to freedom. The Brücke associated rebellion against bourgeois commercial values with the ‘primitive’. ‘Expressionist’ meant: crude unfinished brushwork, distorted colors and forms, sense of the artist’s genuine physical and emotional involvement with both the subject and the medium , rejection of sophistication in favor of achieving a ‘direct’ expression. 2 04.12.2012 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Street, Berlin (1913), one of a series on this theme, depicting prostitutes In 1905, Kirchner, along with Bleyl and two other architecture students, Commentary on contemporary urban life Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Erich Heckel, founded the artists group Die and its institutions as decadent, Berlin Brücke ("The Bridge"). From then on, he committed himself to art. The street scenes with their dandies and group aimed to eschew the prevalent traditional academic style and find prostitutes, images of the modern city as the source of the consumption of human a new mode of artistic expression, which would form a bridge (hence the souls and fermentation of anxiety name) between the past and the present. They responded both to past artists, as well as contemporary international avant-garde movements. As part of the affirmation of their national heritage, they revived older media, particularly woodcut prints. Their group was one of the seminal ones, which in due course had a major impact on the evolution of modern art in the 20th century and created the style of Expressionism. The group met initially in Kirchner's first studio. Bleyl described it as: “that of a real bohemian, full of paintings lying all over the place, drawings, books and artist’s materials — much more like an artist’s romantic lodgings than the home of a well- organised architecture student.” Marzella (1909–10) The group composed a manifesto (mostly Kirchner's work) in 1906, which was carved on wood and asserted a new generation, "who want freedom in our work and in our lives, independence from older, established forces.” They continued: ‘With faith in progress and in a new generation of creators and spectators we call together all youth. As youth, we carry the future, and want to create for ourselves freedom of life and of movement against the long-established older forces. We claim as our own everyone who reproduces that which drives him to creation with directness and authenticity.’ Self-Portrait as a Soldier (1915) Kirchner. Self-Portrait with Model. 1910 3 04.12.2012 The ‘modernity’ of Kirchner’s paintings also defined by their overt sexuality, which was seen as part of free self- expression. Bourgeois culture viewed the open sexuality of prostitutes, dancers, etc. as deviant and decadent. This was compounded by Kirchner’s (and others) association of ‘natural’ sexuality with African culture ie. Kirchner used African models in his studio. The affinity between ideas of : nature/female versus culture/male Kirchner. Nude. c. 1910 Kirchner. Bathers at Moritzburg. 1909 THE ‘PRIMITIVE’: • the idea of the ‘barbarian’ or the ‘primitive’ • an idea which would have a lasting presence in modernist discourse • connotations of untamed, direct expression, as opposed to a ‘civilized’ Westernism. CRITICISM OF MODERN LIFE, RETURN BACK TO ‘PRIMITIVE’ Kirchner. Self-Portrait as Soldier. 1915 •general disillusionment with the war common amongst avant-garde groups as a direct result of the decadence of bourgeois society Erich Heckel Erich Heckel was one of the charter members of Die Brücke. Their meetings took place in a former butcher shop and Heckel served as Treasurer and Secretary responsible for its organization. He was a close friend of Karl Schmidt- Rottluff who he met in high school in 1901. Both studied architecture at the Technical Academy in Dresden but left their studies after founding Die Brucke. In 1909, he took a long sojourn to Italy. In the Fall of 1911, Die Brucke moved to Berlin where they met most of the painters of the avant-garde but in 1913, the group disbanded. Girl with High Hat (Mädchen mit hohem Hut) Erich Heckel (German, 1883-1970) 1913. Drypoint, plate: (25 x 20.2 cm); sheet: (38.9 x 32.4 cm). 4 04.12.2012 After seeing the Futurist exhibition in April 1912, Heckel's style became Prismatic, organized in a series of triangular planes. His specialty was interior scenes that express melancholy and loneliness. His subjects are usually outsiders like circus performers and madmen in anxious or fearful situations. •The idea that the true Expressionist artist was spontaneous (unhampered by the weight of tradition and propriety); then he could access his true inner feelings and responses. •German Expressionism often associated with the idea of the ‘primitive’, in the sense that the ‘primitive’ was considered to be closer to unmediated expression and more ‘authentic’ than the civilized. •Also the idea of ‘nature/culture’, with ‘nature’ being direct, unfettered, instinctual, non-intellectual, anti-civilized, and ‘culture’ being civilization, rationality, repression. •The primitive was particularly worked out in representations of the ‘other’ ie. Africans, Polynesians etc. and in ‘Woman’. Portrait of a Man (Männerbildnis) (1919). Erich Heckel (German, 1883-1970) Woodcut, composition: (46.2 x 32.4 cm); sheet (irreg.): (61.6 x 50.8 cm). Emil Nolde Die Brücke artists invited Nolde to join their group in 1906. Although he remained an active member for only one year, Nolde stayed in close touch with Die Brücke. These younger Expressionists encouraged Nolde’s preference for bright colors and free brushwork, and his boldly carved woodcuts date from his contact with the group. However, Nolde’s first series of intensely original and technically experimental etchings, Fantasies (1905, e.g. Joy of Living) exerted a strong counter- influence on Die Brücke’s graphic art. In his paintings such urban subjects as bars and theatre scenes alternate with brooding seascapes and landscapes. In 1909–13 he completed a series of religious paintings, including the Last Supper (1909), Pentecost (1909) and a nine-part polyptych entitled the Life of Christ (1912). Head with Pipe (Self Portrait) (1907) Lithograph 5 04.12.2012 In 1910 Nolde’s Pentecost , which depicts the mask-like faces of Christ and the Apostles crowned by the flame of the Holy Spirit, became the centre of a row that split the Berlin Secession—one of the most advanced exhibiting societies in Pentecost, Emil Nolde, 1910. Germany up until that time, which Nolde had joined in 1908. Nolde’s primitivist treatment of this religious subject, rendered in glowing colors and bold, Expressionist brushwork, found little favor among the older members of the society, who had grown up in the Impressionist school. When Pentecost and the works of most other younger artists were rejected, Nolde attacked the leadership and principles of the Secession in an open letter to its President, Max Liebermann, whereupon he was expelled from the association.