To Dance Beyond Yourself: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’S
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© COPYRIGHT by Rachel Thornton 2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TO DANCE BEYOND YOURSELF: ERNST LUDWIG KIRCHNER’S WOODCUT PRINTS OF MARY WIGMAN BY Rachel Thornton ABSTRACT Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s legacy as a founding member of Die Brücke (The Bridge), and one of the leading figures of German Expressionism, has made his work of the period between 1905 and 1918 the subject of considerable scholarly attention. Less often considered are the works Kirchner produced after leaving Germany for Switzerland immediately following the end of World War I. The works he made during this later period of his career are generally dismissed as stylistically deficient, derivative, and out of step with the current developments of the artistic avant-garde. Refuting this view of Kirchner’s post-Brücke work, my thesis will examine two series of Kirchner’s dance-themed woodcut prints created in the years 1926 and 1933; works inspired by acclaimed Expressionist dancer Mary Wigman. As I will show, the stylistic elements of the two images in the later series, decidedly different from the dance-themed works that he created in 1926, cannot be interpreted entirely within the context of Expressionism. I interpret these works by relating Kirchner’s interpretation of Wigman’s Ausdruckstanz (Expressionist dance) to his interest in Georges Bataille’s concept of the informe (formlessness), disseminated widely in the French Surrealist magazine Documents. My analysis of Kirchner’s dance imagery centers on the collaborative, cooperative model that Wigman modeled at her school of dance, founded in 1920. I suggest that the negotiation of the dichotomy between individuation and association that Kirchner witnessed in Wigman’s school provided a framework through which he investigated Surrealist concepts as well as his ii own Expressionist past. Ultimately, I demonstrate that Kirchner continued to modify his style beyond Expressionism throughout his career, and that his artistic investigations remained in dialogue with the avant-garde through the early 1930’s. iii “You Higher men, the worst in you is that none of you has learned to dance as a man ought to dance—to dance beyond yourselves!” —Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and No One (1883) iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................................. vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ........................................................................................................ vii INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER 1 EXPRESSIONISM, THE WOODCUT PRINT, AND DANCE ............... 12 CHAPTER 2 KIRCHNER, WIGMAN, AND THE “PROBLEM OF THE GROUP” ........................................................................................................................... 29 CHAPTER 3 WIGMAN SOLO: METAKINETIC TRANSFER AND THE INFORME......................................................................................................................... 51 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................. 66 ILLUSTRATIONS ....................................................................................................................... 69 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................... 71 v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I offer my sincere gratitude to Dr. Juliet Bellow for her wise advice and encouragement throughout this project, and to Denise and Mike for all of their incredible love and support. vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Programm der Künstlergruppe Brücke, 1906. Woodcut. Museum of Modern Art, New York. ................................................................................ 69 Figure 2: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Somersaulting Acrobatic Dancers, 1913. .............................. 69 Woodcut. Museum of Modern Art, New York. ............................................................................ 69 Figure 3: Unknown Author, Mary Wigman in Idolatry,’ 1919. Photograph. Courtesy of the Mary Wigman Archive. .............................................................................................................. 69 Figure 4: Unknown Author, Mary Wigman and her dance group in ‘Chaos,’ 1924. Photograph. Courtesy of the Mary Wigman Archive. ........................................................................... 69 Figure 5: August Scherl, Mary Wigman and Group: Death Dance II, 1926. Photograph. Courtesy of the Mary Wigman Archive. .......................................................................................... 69 Figure 6: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Dance Group, 1926. Woodcut. Galerie Henze & Ketterer AG, Wichtrach, Switzerland. .................................................................................................... 69 Figure 7: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Oppositional Dance, 1926. Woodcut. Galerie Henze & Ketterer AG, Wichtrach, Switzerland. .............................................................................. 69 Figure 8: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, A Group of Artists, 1926-27. Oil on canvas. Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany. ........................................................................................................... 69 Figure 9: Henri Fantin-Latour, A Studio in the Batignolles Quarter, 1870. Oil on canvas. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France. ...................................................................................................... 69 Figure 10: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Dancing Mary Wigman, 1933. Woodcut. Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany. ............................................................................................................... 69 Figure 11: Pablo Picasso, The Three Dancers, 1925. Oil on Canvas. Tate Modern, London, England. ............................................................................................................................ 69 Figure 12: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Color Dance I, 1930-1932. Oil on Canvas. Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany. ............................................................................................. 69 Figure 13: Unknown Author, Mary Wigman in ‘Storm Song,’ 1929. Photograph. Courtesy of the Mary Wigman Archive. .................................................................................................... 69 Figure 14: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Palucca, 1930. Woodcut. Kirchner Museum Davos, Switzerland. ...................................................................................................................... 70 Figure 15: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Mask Dance, 1929. Woodcut. Bündner Kunstmuseum, Chur, Switzerland. ...................................................................................................................... 70 vii Figure 16: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Profile Head (Self Portrait), 1930. Woodcut. Kirchner Museum Davos, Switzerland ............................................................................................ 70 viii INTRODUCTION Between 1926 and 1933, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner completed two series of woodcut prints on the theme of dance. The model and inspiration for these prints was Mary Wigman, the famed German dancer and choreographer who later was credited as a founder of Ausdruckstanz, or Expressionist dance. In the winter of 1925, Kirchner spent several days ensconced in Wigman’s Dresden studio, watching and sketching the choreographer and her students. Afterwards, he wrote in his diary, I feel that there are parallels [with my work], which are expressed in her dancing in the movement of the volumes, in which the solitary movement is strengthened through repetition. It is immeasurably fascinating and exciting to make drawings of these physical movements. I will paint large pictures from them. Yes, what we had suspected has become reality: there is the new art. M[ary] W[igman] instinctively took much from modern pictures, and the creation of a modern concept of beauty operates just as much in her dancing as in my pictures.1 In this entry, Kirchner indicates that he views Wigman as an artist of a stature equal to his own. Indeed, he declares there to be a direct parallel between his work and hers, and relates his act of drawing her to the physicality of the movements she performed. Moreover, in Wigman’s dancing, Kirchner sees a manifestation of the “new art” that he and the artists of Die Brücke (The Bridge) had aimed to develop twenty years prior. Kirchner did in fact go on to make one large painting of Wigman and her dance company as he originally envisioned. However, the primary medium he employed to depict Wigman was the woodcut print: he made at least five woodcuts with Wigman as the subject. In this thesis, I argue that the formal and expressive qualities that Kirchner achieves in these prints stem from 1 Colin Rhodes, “The body and the dance: Kirchner’s Swiss work as Expressionism,” in Expressionism Reassessed, ed. Shulamith Behr, David Fanning, Douglas Jarman (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), 140. 1 the way they weave together the media of dance and the woodcut. Moreover, I propose that it is in these prints and through the subject of Mary Wigman dancing that we may best understand the continuous evolution of Kirchner’s