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ART HISTORY 4450 German Expressionism: Die Brücke (The Bridge)
Die Brücke (1905-13) • • •
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association of artists linking past to future worked together in rented storefront studios program: “protest” art – drawn together by what they were against, rather than in favor of – call on all youth to fight for greater artistic freedom against older, wellestablished powers style: expressive possibilities of color, form & compositional distortions – rapid development of personal styles – inspired by van Gogh’s clear expression of “inner-necessity” vs. Impressionism interest in material world & finesse – Fauvist strong colors (influenced by Matisse exhibit in Berlin in 1908) media/techniques: – life drawing in studios – “plein air” (e.g., Moritzburg lakes near Dresden, at the island of Fehmarn) – woodcuts, lithographs, and drawings
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Die Brücke •
context: urban life – Dresden • key artistic center for visual arts & literature • exhibited annually by prominent galleries • ethnographic museums (e.g., African, Oceanic) • arts & crafts movement • illustrated magazines – Berlin • group relocates in 1910 • confrontation w/ hectic life of metropolis
Kirchner (1880-1938) •
Self-Portrait (1905) – –
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founder of Die Brücke training: • studies architecture in Dresden (1901) • studies painting in Munich (190304) • short stay in Nuremberg, – Dürer’s (c. 1500) original woodblocks figures: non-academic • “fifteen-minute nudes” • attempt to directly access motif • natural poses; angular formulation • no regard for anatomical correctness or spatial relations
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Kirchner’s Dancer with Raised Skirt (1909)
Kirchner • Panama Girls (1910) – aesthetic: rejects naturalism • abstracted facial features • flattened volumes – theme: cabaret dancers • shocking to proper bourgeois society • celebration of low life & uninhibited behavior • targets est. Tastes – composition: shallow; friezelike – color: vibrant – brushwork: crude & broadly applied
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Kirchner • Japanese Parasol (1909) – – – –
subject: reclining nude theme: erotic figure: angular posterior spatial order: vertically compressed – composition: dynamic – color: vibrant/complimentary • garish green (see van Gogh) • influence of Fauvism – brushwork: crude, yet painterly
(Left) Matisse’s Fauvist Blue Nude (1907) vs. Kirchner’s German Expressionist Japanese Parasol (1909)
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Kirchner •
Self-portrait w/ Model (1910) – theme: sex as artistic impetus • studio setting • paintbrush phallus – spatial order: compressed & shallow, yet legible – figures: abstracted • angular features • flattened volumes – brushwork: crude & broadly applied (see Fauvism) – composition: synthetic • combines bilateral forms w/ diagonal arrangements – color: vibrant & complimentary – light/shadow: nearly obviated
Kirchner •
Two Women in the Street (1913) – aesthetic: permutation of Fauvism & Cubism – subject: mocks bourgeoisie – spatial order: compressed – perspective: tilted – figures: grotesque; distorted • brutal simplifications • jagged & geometric • angular & elongated features – composition: dynamic – color: vibrant/complimentary, yet garish – brushwork: crude
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Kirchner • Self-Portrait as Soldier (1915) – biography: WWI • mobilized to field artillery • suffers nervous breakdown – brushwork:crude – perspective: shallow; compressed – figures: angular – setting: artist’s studio • nude model • paintings placed against walls • symbolic mutilation – bloody stump cut off at wrist, instead of paintbrush
Kirchner – Self-Portrait as Drunkard • biography: post-WWI – nervous breakdown – growing dependency on sleeping pills, morphine & alcohol • Nazis deem him “degenerate” artist (c. 1935) – confiscated 600 of his paintings – soon afterward, commits suicide
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Kirchner • Winter Landscape (1915) – theme: landscape • during summers went to countryside (1907-10) – spatial order: relatively naturalistic – forms: angular – brushwork: impasto – composition: dynamic – color: vibrant – light/shadow: subsumed by color
Emile Nolde (1867-1956) •
biography: – not an original member of Die Brücke; joined in 1906 – resigns from group in 1907 • series of insulting letters from Schmidt-Rottluff • group pressure to develop style more closely aligned to other members • as a result, works in isolation – themes: • religious • nudes • landscapes
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Nolde •
Crucifixion (1912) – figures: grotesque; abstracted • musculature attenuated, sinewy • flattened forms • facial features – brushwork: inelegant • slapdash in comparison to Matisse – composition: stable – color: vibrant/complimentary, yet dissonant – light/shadow: absent
Nolde’s Dance Around the Golden Calf (1910)
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Nolde’s Autumn Sea (1910)
IMAGE INDEX •
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PECHSTEIN, Max. Poster for Die Brücke Exhibition (c. 1910). KIRCHNER, Ludwig. The Turning Road (1911), Oil on canvas, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany. KIRCHNER, Ludwig. Self-Portrait (c. 1910), woodcut. KIRCHNER, Ludwig. Dancer with Raised Skirt (1909), Woodcut, 9-3/4 x 13-1/4 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon. KIRCHNER, Ludwig. Panama Girls (1910), Oil on canvas, 19 7/8 x 19 7/8 in., North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC. KIRCHNER, Ludwig. Japanese Parasol (1909), Oil on canvas, 92.5 x 80.5 cm., Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf. (Left) Matisse’s Fauvist Blue Nude (1907) vs. Kirchner’s German Expressionist Japanese Parasol (1909).
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IMAGE INDEX •
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KIRCHNER, Ludwig. Self-portrait with Model (1910), Oil on canvas, Hamburger Kunsthalle. KIRCHNER. Two Women in the Street (1913), Oil on canvas, 3’10 ½ x 2’11 ½ in., Museum Ludwig, Cologne. KIRCHNER. Self-portrait as Soldier (1915), Oil on canvas, 27 1/4 x 24 in., Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio. KIRCHNER, Ludwig. Self-Portrait as a Drunkard (1914), Oil on canvas, 119.5 x 90.5 cm., German National Museum, Nuremberg. KIRCHNER, Ludwig. Winter Landscape in Moonlight (c. 1915), oil on canvas, 47 ½ x 47 ½ in., The Detroit Institute of Arts.
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NOLDE, Emil. Prophet (c. 1910), woodcut. NOLDE. Crucifixion (1912), Oil on canvas, 200.5 x 193.5 cm., Nolde-Stiftung Seebull. NOLDE, Emil. Dance Around the Golden Calf (1910), Oil on canvas, 88 x 105.5 cm., Staatsgalerie moderner Kunst, Munich. NOLDE, Emil. Autumn Sea VII (1910), Oil on canvas, 60 x 70 cm., Nolde-Stiftung Seebull.
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