Expressionism
Expressionism is an artistic movement emerged in the early twentieth century , in northern Europe, particularly Germany. Expressionism has touched many fields of art: the painting , the architecture , the literature , the theater , the cinema , the music , the dance , etc.. Surviving until the advent of the Nazi regime, expressionism is condemned by one who regarded it as "degenerate."
Summary |
Description
Expressionism is the projection of a subjectivity that tends to distort reality to inspire the viewer an emotional response. Representations are often based on harrowing visions, stylized and distorting reality to achieve the greatest intensity of expression. These are a reflection of the pessimistic view that the expressionists have their day, haunted by the threat of the First World War. The expressionist works often portray symbols, influenced by psychoanalysis and infant research symbolism.
In the early twentieth century, this movement deeply rooted in northern Europe (especially Germany) is a reaction to Impressionism French. While Impressionism was still describe the physical reality, German Expressionism does it focus more on this reality and submit to the moods of the artist.
Expressionism also break with Impressionism through a very aggressive form: violent colors, sharp lines. He then enrolled in the continuity of Fauvism begins to run out and whose leading exponents differ more or less brutally, Matisse , Marquet , Van Dongen , Braque , Derain , Friesz and Vlaminck. Provided expressionism is not really a movement or a school but more a reaction against academic and society. Expressionist artists often remain isolated.
The Cry of the painter Edvard Munch is one of the most representative and famous Expressionist paintings.
Origins
We can relate the painters of fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Matthias Grnewald and El Greco to expressionist tendency, but in practice the term refers mainly to works of the twentieth century.
The first elements of expressionism warning appear in the late nineteenth century, particularly in the canvas of Edvard Munch , The Scream and the evolution of the work of Van Gogh (impressionist). The art critic Wilhelm Worringer in 1908, is the first to talk about "expressionism."
Expressionism also hatched while the photographic technique is perfected and the relationship of art to reality was profoundly changed. The pictorial art loses its function as the preferred means of reproduction of objective reality which reinforces its subjective component and allows him gradually to overcome the standards.
The most prominent painters of this movement were:
- Georges Gimel
- Oskar Kokoschka
- Franz Marc
- Paula Modersohn-Becker
- Edvard Munch
- Emil Nolde
- Max Pechstein
- Egon Schiele
- Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
- Chaim Soutine
- Maurice Roche
- August Macke
- Alexi von Jawlensky
Filiations
Several arts groups may be related to Expressionism, such as the Association of Munich Artists (NKVM) and New Berlin Secession of which are derived by breaking, respectively Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) and Die Brcke (The Bridge). In 1918, the Group in November crystallizes the political implications. After 1933, the movement in its formal dimension, has influenced many other artists, such as the Abstract Expressionists in the United States.
Die Brcke
Die Brcke was founded in 1905 by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , Fritz Bleyl , Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff to Dresden. Max Pechstein and Emil Nolde in 1906 , Otto Mueller in 1910 and Cuno Amiet join them. The Fauve Van Dongen also joined them and was through with his French companions. The group's intention was to bring anything revolutionary who wants to join them, so they expressed it in a letter to Nolde. Their greatest interest was to destroy the old conventions, exactly what is happening in France.
According to Kirchner, they could not impose rules and the inspiration was flowing freely and give immediate expression to the emotional pressures of the artist, they are less concerned with formal aspects, a position which separated them from the Fauvism of Matisse and Braque. with the very brutal and bloody scenes
For Germans, the content is more important than form. The burden of social criticism they printed at work earned them criticism from conservatives who accused him of being a danger to German youth.
Kirchner was considered the most authentic representative of Die Brcke. He was a hypersensitive artist who painted the streets and urban life in Berlin in new and original. His gaunt, sharp shapes, colors acids, are characteristic, in works such as The School of Dance 1914.
Emil Nolde , even if he left the group at the end of 1907 , was also considered one of the most important representatives of the group. Influenced by the Belgian Ensor and Van Gogh , he felt strongly attracted by the black primitivism and the myth of the savage. His research focuses more of paradise on the concretion of the utmost importance that the attitudes escapism, shaping his tragic sense of nature and inspiration of a psychological and instinctive elements that made him the expressionist painter par excellence. Around 1909 , after a serious illness, he began to paint pictures with a religious theme, in which he expressed his mystical inspiration.
Edvard Munch although it is not linked with Die Brcke is considered the father of Expressionism. He was Norwegian , and until 1885 , became interested in Impressionism and Symbolism. From 1892 , his style was fully formed, sinuous curves, colors arbitrary obsession for disability and death, ominous beings fleeing a mass of color, as seen in his most famous painting, The cry. His stay in Germany until 1908 explains his influence in Die Brcke. In 1913 , occurred the group's dissolution as a result of the obvious differences between the components of the group and establishing a market for them complicated requirements of a common front.
Der Blaue Reiter
In 1912 , another group of artists including Wassily Kandinsky , Franz Marc , August Macke , Alexei Jawlensky , Gabriele Mnter and Marianne von Werefkin gather in Murnau , near Munich under the name Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider). Unlike the Die Brcke artists of Der Blaue Reiter felt the need to create a more controlled language to promote their messages. They published books and organized exhibitions. They developed a spiritual art in which they reduced to naturalism to happen to abstraction. They shared some ideas with the Brcke Expressionists but they held a purification largest instincts and they also wanted to capture the spiritual essence of reality. On this point, their ideas were more popular and speculative. The greatest representatives were Kandinsky and Franz Marc, accompanied by Macke, Jawlensky and Klee.
Kandinsky, a native of Moscow , arrived in Munich in 1896. In 1909 he was appointed president of the New Munich Artists' Association and organized the exhibitions of 1909 and 1910 to present the work of the Fauve and Cubist first. In the catalog made in the second exhibition, he began to introduce his theory of art, which ended two years later with the publication of his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art. In 1912 , after having resigned from the association he founded with Franz Marc Der Blaue Reiter. This name is derived from Kandinsky's love for horse and that of Franz Marc for horses. The group disbanded when the war with Macke and Marc died. The first two exhibitions of Der Blaue Reiter showed graphic works and drawings.
In 1913 , they will be invited to participate in an international exhibition in Berlin called the Salon d'Automne Berliners. His poetry was defined as a lyric expressionist in the loophole which tended not to the wild world but to the spiritual nature and inner world. For Kandinsky, the painting was to extend the heavy material reality to the vision of pure abstraction with color as a means, hence the development of a complex theory of color. In painting as pure art, book of 1913 , he argues that the painting is already a separate reality, a world in itself, a new form of being, acting on the viewer through sight and causing him deep spiritual experiences. Earlier, in 1910 , Kandinsky had pioneered abstract watercolors.
For Klee, the artist had to mingle with the forces of nature and act as a medium so that his creations are accepted in the same way as one accepts the natural phenomena. Unlike Kandinsky, Klee was convinced that art could capture the creative spirit of nature and that is why he rejected absolute abstraction. Specifically, Klee sank early influence, like Mack, the simultaneity of Delaunay. At the same time, it was the first artist to enter the realms of the unconscious as Freud and Jung began to study them.
After the group disbanded in 1919 , Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus in Weimar , school of design and architecture, which the teachers were the greatest masters of expressionism constructive, and brings together men like Feininger , Klee and Kandinsky.
In Germany after the First World War, the expressionistic realism appeared movement in which artists broke away from abstraction, reflecting on figurative art and rejecting any activity that did not deal with the urgent problems of reality the postwar period. This movement regrouped Otto Dix , George Grosz , Max Beckmann and the sculptor Barlach.
Architecture
The work of Erich Mendelsohn is expressionist. See for example the Einstein Tower in Potsdam in Germany.
Literature
In literature are generally seen as the names of the poets Hugo Ball , Gottfried Benn , Yvan Goll or Georg Trakl but also related novels Franz Kafka expressionism as well as several playwrights German early twentieth century such as Georg Kaiser or Ernst Toller.
In France, where the term is not commonly used in literature, we talked about expressionism of a novel by Octave Mirbeau as in heaven , he wrote under the scope of the revelation of Van Gogh , or about his Jokes and moralities.
The poet Pierre Garnier , who has devoted several books to Gottfried Benn , published with his wife Ilse 's first book in France on expressionism in 1962.
Theatre
The first openly expressionist playwright qualified was the German August Stramm.
The influence of cinema on the expressionist theater was evident from the earliest times, also using the set and costumes of the actors as instruments in the service of dramatic than the conformism of conventional theater. The author, the actor and the public must share the insight of the first, arriving in a tone that emphasizes the mystical mimicry. Representing the most emblematic appears after the First World War: Ernst Toller. Subsequently other authors such as Bertolt Brecht , will be influenced by this movement.
Frank Wedekind is generally regarded as the playwright leader of expressionist theater.
Cinema
With the advent of the film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in 1919 , Robert Wiene appears as one of the first directors clearly introducing elements of the expressionist cinema. By this means we get the symbolism through the sets, lights, costumes and interpretation of characters, elements who want to show to the big screen, a distorted view of reality. Initially, the German silent cinema was completely linked to expressionism with directors like Fritz Lang , Friedrich Murnau , Paul Leni and Paul Wegener. The most representative works of this period are: Murnau's Nosferatu, Metropolis , The Three Lights, The Last Laugh (Der Mann Letze), and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. The excess was associated with a kind of horror and fantasy films. Some later works were realized in the film sound stage, eg, M Cursed (also known simply as M) by Fritz Lang. However, in modern cinematography, its representatives deemed as Orson Welles and Andrzej Wajda , incorporated it into an aesthetic much more mature and far from the theatrical excess.
Music
Der Blaue Reiter published its first issue in the work of three composers: Arnold Schoenberg (who also exerted expressionist painting), Alban Berg and Anton von Webern , formed the trio called Second Viennese School. " In the path of these musicians we find the presence fully expressionist operas Lulu and Wozzeck by Berg and dramas Erwartung and Die Hand Die Glckliche Schoenberg.
Dance
Senior representatives are Kurt Jooss and Mary Wigman or Harald Kreutzberg.
Bibliography
- Pierre and Ilse Garnier , German Expressionism (test followed by a choice of texts, bilingual German / French for poetry) collection Have you seen Andre Silvaire, 1962, repr., 1979
- Maurice Lemaitre, German Expressionist Theatre (Centre for Creativity, Paris, 1967), Foundation-Bismuth Lematre, 13 rue de Mulhouse, 75002 Paris, France.
- Jean-Michel Palmier , Expressionism as rebellion, Volume I "Apocalypse and Revolution," Volume II "Expressionism and the arts, Payot, 1978 and 1979.
- Lionel Richard, Expressionism Collection Petite encyclopedia, Somogy, 1993.
- Expressionist literature
- Lionel Richard, German Expressionists, Panorama bilingual generation, Complexe, Brussels, 2001.
External Links
- expressionism
- (De) Presentation of German Expressionism by Astrid Buerhle on key language
- Blog about German Expressionism
- Expressionist literature
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