Expressionism
is a term that embraces an early 20th century style of
art, music and literature that is charged with an emotional
and spiritual vision of the world
The
Roots of Expressionism
Matthias
Grünewald (c.1475-1528)
The
Crucifixion Panel from the Isenheim Altarpiece
(oil on wood, 1515)
Musée
d'Unterlinden
Expressionism
is associated with Northern Europe in general and Germany
in particular. The Expressionist spirit has always existed
in the German psyche. Its embryonic forms can be recognized
in the physical and spiritual suffering depicted in Grünewald's
‘Crucifixion’ above, in the tortured
vision of Martin Schongauer’s engraving of the 'Temptation
of Saint Anthony' below.
Martin
Schongauer
(1448-1491)
Temptation
of Saint Anthony
(engraving on copper c.1480)
Museum
of Fine Arts, Budapest
At
the end of the 19th century, this Expressionist spirit
resurfaced in the paintings of two awkward and isolated
personalities – one was the Dutchman, Vincent
Van Gogh and the other a Norwegian, Edvard Munch.
While the Impressionists were admiring the colour and
beauty of the natural landscape, Van Gogh and Munch took
a radically different perspective. They chose to look
inwards to discover a form of ‘self-expression’
that offered them an individual voice in a world that
they perceived as both insecure and hostile. It was this
more subjective search for a personal emotional truth
that drove them on and ultimately paved the way for the
Expressionist art forms of the 20th century that explored
the inner landscape of the soul.
Vincent
Van Gogh (1853-1890)
Sunflowers
(oil on canvas, 1888)
National
Gallery, London
Paintings
like Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ (1888)
opened our eyes to the intensity
of expressive colour. He used colour to express his feelings
about a subject, rather than to simply describe it. In
a letter to his brother Theo he explained, ‘Instead
of trying to reproduce exactly what I see before my eyes,
I use colour more arbitrarily to express myself forcibly.’
His heightened vision helped to liberated colour as an
emotional instrument in the repertoire of 20th century
art and the vitality of his brushwork became a key influence
in the development of both the Fauves'
and the Expressionists’ painting technique.
Edvard
Munch (1863-1944)
The
Scream
(oil, tempera and pastel on board, 1893)
National
Gallery, Oslo
Munch’s
painting of ‘The Scream’ (1893) was equally
influential. It provides us with a psychological blueprint
for Expressionist art: distorted shapes and exaggerated
colours that amplify a sense of anxiety and alienation.
‘The Scream’ is Munch’s own voice crying
in the wilderness, a prophetic voice that declares the
Expressionist message, fifteen years before the term was
invented. "I was walking along the road with
two friends. The sun set. I felt a tinge of melancholy.
Suddenly the sky became a bloody red. I stopped, leaned
against the railing, dead tired. And I looked at the flaming
clouds that hung like blood and a sword over the blue-black
fjord and city. My friends walked on. I stood there, trembling
with fright. And I felt a loud, unending scream piercing
nature."
German
Expressionism (circa. 1905-25)
Expressionism
was a militant spirit. The German Expressionists saw themselves
as revolutionary shock troops with art as their weapon.
They wanted to liberate themselves from the repressive
right-wing social and political establishment in pre WW1
Germany, but they were also desperate to free their art
from the shackles of French painting which had monopolised
modern art since Impressionism.
In
1912 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner wrote to his fellow Expressionist
artist Emile Nolde, 'German art has to fly on its
own wings. We have a duty to separate ourselves from the
French.....it is time for an independent German art.'
Paradoxically, they drew on the exaggerated colours and
simplified forms of Fauvism
(a French movement) as an the main inspiration for their
painting style. They loved the primitive aggression of
the Fauvist’s technique but found the Fauvist's
ideas incompatible
with the Expressionist mind-set. Fauvist
art was an optimistic style that celebrated the joy
of life, but an Arcadian lifestyle sheltered from the
problems of the real world. Expressionist art confronted
the world head on. It was essentially pessimistic about
the future of Germany and contemptuous of its contemporary
conservative attitudes. Consequently, the Expressionists
looked to the past for their inspiration. They drew upon
the influences of medieval German Gothic art, folk art
and ‘primitive art’, particularly African
art, as the unrefined and untutored qualities of these
styles would provoke outrage from the artistic establishment.
German
Expressionism evolved into two main artistic factions:
those who were more socially and politically conscious
were accommodated by Die Brücke, while those
of a more spiritual nature were drawn towards Der
Blaue Reiter.
Die
Brücke (The Bridge)
Karl
Schmidt-Rottluff (1884-1976)
Madchen
aus Kowno (Girl from Kowno)
(woodcut, 1918)
Brücke
Museum
Die
Brücke was founded in Dresden in 1905 by Ernst Ludwig
Kirchner (1880-1938) , Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884-1976),
Erich Heckel (1883-1970) and Fritz Bleyl (1880-1966).
The meaning of the name suggested they would build Die
Brücke (the bridge) from the great German artistic
past of Dürer and Grunewald over the contemporary
artistic bourgeoisie to a new and better future. They
even wrote a manifesto which Kirchner carved in wood proclaiming,
'Putting our faith in a new generation of creators
and art lovers, we call upon all youth to unite. And being
youth, the bearers of the future, we want to wrest from
the comfortably established older generation freedom to
live and move. Anyone who directly and honestly reproduces
that force which impels him to create belongs to us.'
The
members of Die Brucke adopted a bohemian lifestyle and
lived as an artistic community in a working class district
of Dresden, deliberately isolating themselves from the
'comfortably established'. They believed that artists
should have total freedom of expression, unrestricted
by social or artistic conventions.
Like
many artistic movements they looked back to move forward.
Gothic art, which had both a German lineage and an appropriately
dark temperament, became Die Brucke's natural inspiration.
Its jagged forms were easily fused with the primal visual
vocabulary of the African and Oceanic art that they had
discovered in the Ethnographic Museum in Dresden.
The
main artistic form that emerged from this fusion of styles
was the woodcut. The woodcut had been a traditional German
print medium for narrative illustration. When fused with
the vocabulary of 'primitive' art, the medium became a
powerful tool for personal expression. A modern alterative
to this traditional technique was the linocut, a medium
invented by Die Brücke.
Emile
Nolde (1867-1956)
Crucifixion
(oil on canvas, 1912)
Nolde-Stiftung
Seebull
The
Die Brücke manifesto was an open invitation to other
artists with similar values to join the group. Emil Nolde,
whose painting was following a similar path to Die Brücke,
joined in 1906. However, Nolde only remained a member
for a few months as the community lifestyle did not live
up to his expectations. He was older and had a more conservative
nature than the young Die Brücke activists.
Nolde's
favourite subjects were dark brooding seascapes that recalled
the landscape of his youth and biblical themes that reflected
his strict religious upbringing. He was fascinated by
the expressive intensity of the Isenheim Altarpiece and
created his own version: a nine section polyptych of the
life of Christ. The central Crucifixion panel above, obviously
based on Grünewald's masterpiece, is a classic piece
Expressionist painting - a stylistic fusion of primitive
drawing with the exaggerated colour of the Fauves,
held together by a German Gothic composition.
Der
Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider)
Der
Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) was not exactly
an Expressionist group, more a meeting of diverse talents
who contributed to the publication of an almanac 'Der
Blaue Reiter' and two exhibitions of the same name.
Der
Blaue Reiter (the almanac) was published in May
1912 by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz
Marc. The title was taken from a drawing of a blue
horseman that was used for the cover of the almanac. Kandinsky
stated, 'We both loved blue: Marc - horses, myself
- riders. So the name invented itself.'
While
Die Brücke artists adopted 'primitive' art as a raw
style that would subvert the traditions of the establishment,
Der Blaue Reiter artists were attracted by the more mystical
aspects of the style, particularly its relationship with
the spiritual and supernatural. Primitive art had a certain
purity that set it apart from the materialism and corruption
of the time - 'a bridge into the world of the spirit'
as Marc put it.
Der
Blaue Reiter exhibitions took place in Munich and preceded
the publication of the almanac. The first, an exhibition
of paintings by Kandinsky, Marc,
Auguste Macke and some others, took place in December
1911, and the second, a graphics exhibition which included
a wider range of artists from further afield, opened in
the spring of 1912.
The
aim of Der Blaue Reiter exhibitions was to highlight the
similarities in different approaches to creating art,
for example, finding common ground between the primitive
and the contemporary. They outlined this objective in
the catalogue for the first exhibition, 'We do not
seek to propagate any precise or particular form; our
object is to show, in the variety of the forms represented,
how the inner desire of artists realises itself in multiple
fashion.'
Der
Blaue Reiter came to an end after the deaths of Franz
Marc and Auguste Macke during World War 1
Expressive
Abstraction
Wassily
Kandinsky (1866-1944)
Composition
IV
(oil on canvas, 1911)
Kunstsammlung
Nordrhein-Westfallen, Dusseldorf
Kandinsky's
painting was moving away from the depiction of realistic
forms into the more spiritual realms of abstraction. Since
childhood he had studied music, playing both the piano
and cello. He also had a highly developed sense of synaesthetic
response (experiencing colours in response to hearing
sounds) and he recognised that colour could trigger
our emotions much in the same way as music touches our
soul. This link between the visual and the aural inspired
his experiments with colour as an abstract element for
the subject of a painting. The idea was reinforced by
a chance experience in 1908, 'I was returning, immersed
in thought from my sketching, when on opening the studio
door I was suddenly confronted by a picture of incandescent
beauty. Bewildered, I stopped and stared at it. The painting
lacked all subject, depicted no identifiable object and
was entirely composed of bright colour patches. Finally,
I approached closer and saw it for what it really was
- my own painting, standing on its side on the easel.....One
thing became clear to me: that objectiveness, the depiction
of objects, needed no place in my paintings, and was indeed
harmful to them.'
In
his publication, of 1911, 'CONCERNING THE SPIRITUAL
IN ART' he states that 'Colour cannot stand alone;
it cannot dispense with boundaries of some kind ........A
never-ending extent of red can only be seen in the mind;
when the word red is heard, the colour is evoked without
definite boundaries.'
His
paintings of this period are attempts to release this
psychic quality of colour by freeing it from the task
of describing physical objects. In moving towards abstraction
by breaking down the boundaries of realistic forms, Kandinsky
tries to tap into the more expressive power of colour
as it exists in the mind. Although, as in the musically
and abstractly titled 'Composition IV' above,
there are still vague references to figures and objects
in the landscape, colour emerges as an ephemeral force
that energises the entire canvas.
Kandinsky
was the first artist to push painting towards total abstraction.
He is quoted as saying, "Of all the arts, abstract
painting is the most difficult. It demands that you know
how to draw well, that you have a heightened sensitivity
for composition and for colors, and that you be a true
poet. This last is essential."
Beyond
Expressionism
After
the disintegration of the more formal Expressionist groups
in Germany, Expressionism continued to evolve in a variety
of ways through the work of individual artists like Paul
Klee and Max Beckmann. The Expressionist spirit resurfaced
in art across the world throughout the 20th century: Francis
Bacon in Britain, the Abstract Expressionists in the USA
and eventually returning to Germany in the form of Anselm
Kiefer in the last quarter of the century.
Paul
Klee (1879-1940)
Ad
Parnassum
(oil on board, 1932)
Kunstmuseum,
Bern
The
Swiss artist Paul Klee took part in the second Der Blaue
Reiter exhibition. Through the influence of Kandinsky,
Marc and Macke, Klee became interested in the abstract
use of colour. Klee, like Kandinsky was a talented musician
and the relationship between art and music was a driving
force in his art. The
painting above illustrates this link between the arts.
The
title 'Ad Parnassum' (towards Parnassus) refers
to both Mount Parnassus (the home of the Muses - the
nine goddesses of the arts in Greek mythology) and
'Gradus Ad Parnassum' (the Path to Parnassus - the
name of a classic 18th century textbook on musical counterpoint).
The bold triangle at the top of the picture represents
Mount Parnassus, the orange circle symbolises the sun
and the arch at the bottom indicates the door to the temple.
The most important element of this painting is the way
that Klee uses colour to express a musical idea. The underpainted
patches of background colours are like the deep base chords
of a musical composition while the brighter mosaic-like
surface of dots act like a counterpoint to complete the
harmony.
Max
Beckmann (1884-1950)
The
Departure
(triptych - oil on canvas, 1932-33)
The
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Max
Beckman continued Die Brücke's spirit of protest
and relationship with the art of the past in his disturbing
allegories of victimisation and alienation. These powerful
images, triggered by his traumatic experiences of the
trenches in the medical corps during WW1, often used the
religious format of a triptych for their composition,
recalling Renaissance art like the Isenheim Altarpiece.
Francis
Bacon (1909-1992)
Study
after Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X
(oil on canvas, 1953))
Des
Moines Art Center
Francis
Bacon, the British painter, also used the triptych
format in his convulsive images of post-war angst and
abandonment. While personally denying any Expressionist
influence in his art, his electrifying version of Pope
Innocent X, (again recalling the art of the past
as it was based on the Velázquez painting of 1650),
reinvents the original Expressionist prototype: 'The Scream'
by Edvard Munch.
