chapter 3 Promoting Expressionism before Expressionism: Künstlergruppe Brücke and Theories of the Modern Image before World War I

The notion of Expressionism as an artistic movement developed in the sec- ond decade of the twentieth century. It was the retrospective creation of crit- ics who attempted to formulate a unifying concept under which to organize the numerous and varied artists whose work shared several relatively novel characteristics. The artists to whom this label was applied did not think of themselves as Expressionists initially, and only after the term became estab- lished in the German arts press in 1911 did they begin to identify themselves as Expressionist.1 Expressionism, for the early critics, was international, and it took its cues primarily from late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century modernist developments in France.2 The most decisive characteristic of Expressionism for these critics was its rejection of Impressionism on both sty- listic and epistemological grounds.3 A varied set of visual characteristics was key to defining early Expressionism, particularly as an international movement. In general, it was identified by its abstracted shapes, bold and anti-naturalistic colors, energetically expressive brushwork, and marked degrees of decorative flatness. Early uses of the term designated a range of Post-Impressionist works, particularly Fauvism and Cubism. Expressionists were regarded as the progeny

1 Marit Werenskiold traces the origins of the term “Expressionism” to mid-nineteenth- century England and follows its scattered and unsystematic usages in Europe and the U.S. until 1911. She argues that, in 1911, it took on a new, widely shared meaning as a term des- ignating Post-Impressionist art. In the catalogue for the April, 1911 exhibition of the Berlin Secession “Expressionism” is the term used to identify recent French paintings, including works by Georges Braque, André Derain, Othon Friesz, Henri Manguin, and others. The word rapidly gained currency in Germany as it appeared in the many reviews of the show that appeared in newspapers and arts-related periodicals, The Concept of Expressionism: Origin and Metamorphoses, trans. Ronald Walford (Oslo, Bergen, Stavanger, Tromso: Universitets- forlaget, 1984). 5–13. See also, Katalog der XXII. Ausstellung der Berliner Sezession (Berlin: Verlag des Ausstel- lungshaus am Kurfürstendamm, 1911). 2 For the relationship between Expressionism and late nineteenth- and early twentieth- century French modernist art, see Timothy O. Benson, “Expressionism in Germany and France,” in Expressionism in Germany and France: From van Gogh to Kandinsky, ed. Timothy O. Benson (Munich, London, New York: Prestel, 2014), 47–60. 3 For a more detailed overview of anti-Impressionist sentiments in Germany, see Chapter Two.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004380998_005 138 chapter 3 of artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Henri Matisse. Soon, however, “Expressionism” began to be narrowed as a label, and by 1914, it was used with increasing frequency to signal a specifically German art form. While “German Expressionism” shares many of the visual qualities that de- fined the broader category of Post-Impressionist art, it has come to be defined primarily by the principles that guided its artists. Expressionism in this sense was meant to be attuned to a fundamentally German sensibility that was di- rected toward the spiritual, a striving toward higher metaphysical truths that countered the industrialization and excessive rationalism and intellectualism of the modern life. This desire to counter the effects of an overly rationalized world also led German Expressionist artists to celebrate primal energies, pre- rational forces that, they believed, were best expressed urgently, directly, and free of the conventions of mimetic realism. By producing art that countered the rigid rationality of modern life, the Expressionists hoped that their art could help to change German society, allowing it to regain access to a more profoundly meaningful world. Their work, therefore, was meant to appeal to audiences’ own longings for a better, more spiritual, less alienating world. The bold appearance of their paintings, with its flattened, simplified forms and its bright, often violently contrasting colors, was meant to disrupt traditional con- templative modes of viewing art. Instead of relying on aesthetic judgment to apprehend an Expressionist piece, the viewer was meant to be directly seized emotionally and spiritually by the work itself. By appealing to viewers’ emo- tions and spiritual sensibilities through the sheer visual forcefulness of their art, Expressionist artists hoped to reform the modern world. For example, Vassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, members of the Munich- based Expressionist artists group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), believed the most crucial task of the artist was to represent inner experience without relying on traditional aesthetic forms or even on reference to the external world. The artist, therefore, created form from what Kandinsky referred to as “inner necessity”:

… the most important thing about form is not whether it is personal, na- tional, stylish, whether it adheres to the major contemporary movements or not, whether it is related to many or to few other forms, whether it stands alone or not, etc. etc.; rather, the most important factor in the ques- tion of form is whether or not the it arises from inner necessity. (italics in original)4

4 Vassily Kandinsky, “On the Question of Form,” 1912, in The Blue Rider Almanac, ed. Vassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, documentary new edition, ed. Klaus Lankheit, trans. by Henning