German Art of the 20th Century Expressionism

German Art of the 20th Century: Expressionism






German Art of the 20th Century: Expressionism

Steve Carroll
  Jul 6, 2021
The work of Die Br;cke and Der Blau Reiter artists
Key moments

0:00
hi there and welcome to
0:03
my presentation on german expressionism
0:06
in particular
0:07
the movements die broker and a blau
0:10
writer
0:11
this happens to be one of my favorite
0:13
periods in
0:14
20th century art so excuse me if i get a
0:17
little bit
0:17
excited first of all what is
0:21
expressionism well expressionism has
0:24
been defined
0:25
as a movement that wanted to show that
0:27
there was more to painting than
0:29
impressionism there was more to it than
0:32
just the appearance of things there was
0:34
also the feeling
0:36
in painting i would describe
0:38
expressionism
0:39
as being where the expression or the
0:43
emotion
0:44
of an image is just important in fact
0:46
more important
0:47
than the anatomical uh accuracy
0:51
of that depiction there is a story
0:54
that many years ago eugene delacroix was
0:57
in his studio and he was painting a
0:59
human figure
1:00
and somebody in this studio said you
1:02
know the anatomy on that arm is wrong
1:04
to which he said the anatomy may be
1:07
wrong
1:08
but the expression is right so that's
1:11
where it was
1:12
believed the expression expressionism
1:15
actually came from i want to start by
1:18
looking at
1:19
the earlier movement die broker which
1:22
was based in
1:23
dresden the self-appointed leader of
1:26
that was a marvelous artist called ernst
1:29
ludwig kirschner and he was
1:32
not an easy person to get on with he was
1:35
a bit of an ego
1:36
at one point he wrote a book about the
1:39
movement in which
1:40
he wrote more about himself than the
1:42
other members
1:43
of the group but this painting here is
1:46
called the painters of the brook
1:48
uh painted in 1925 and it shows um
1:52
sitting down otto mueller and then
1:54
kirschner
1:55
and then eric heckel and then karl
1:58
schmidt
1:58
rotloff the name di brooker came from
2:02
the
2:02
writings of nisha who said that mankind
2:06
is a bridge between this world and
2:09
eternity
2:10
now this is the manifesto
2:14
rather marvelous created in 1906
2:17
and you will notice that it's basically
2:19
printed using woodcut
2:21
technology now a woodcut is where
2:24
you cut against the grain of the wooden
2:26
block
2:27
a wooden a wood engraving is where you
2:30
paint at the end of the grain
2:32
and you get much finer detail but the
2:34
wood cut was actually
2:36
something that uh it dictated a kind of
2:39
lumpy crudeness
2:41
uh this was exploited of course by
2:43
albrecht jura
2:44
in the um early 16th century the great
2:47
german painter and printmaker but here
2:50
we have
2:51
a manifesto and uh everything that they
2:54
created for the
2:56
the group things like the um
2:59
the membership card um all of that was
3:02
created
3:03
using woodcut which we will come to a
3:06
little later
3:07
here is kirschner's rather beautiful
3:09
girl with japanese umbrella from around
3:12
1909 to 1910
3:14
they were quite um bohemian
3:18
people very anti-establishment however
3:21
kirschner kept having to ask his dad for
3:23
more money because he was
3:24
wasting it all and wasn't making
3:26
anything from his painting
3:28
but you'll notice in this color the
3:30
intense uh sorry in this painting the
3:32
intense
3:32
colors particularly that really strong
3:35
and rather strange green which he was
3:38
off to use but what they're doing in
3:41
here is they're exaggerating the drawing
3:44
they're exaggerating the color
3:45
to create a feeling my favorite period
3:48
of kirshan's work was when he went to
3:51
berlin
3:52
around 1913 and what you've got here is
3:56
a woodcut
3:57
called women on the corner what it
3:58
basically does is it depicts
4:01
prostitutes on a street corner in berlin
4:04
there was social comment here because
4:06
berlin was considered the great city of
4:08
culture
4:09
where this type of thing didn't happen
4:11
and what he's pointing out is yes it
4:13
does happen
4:14
and many of the clients of these women
4:16
were the men
4:17
of culture to understand die broker
4:20
you have to understand where germany was
4:23
at the beginning of the 20th century
4:26
under bismarck in the 19th century
4:28
um germany which had been previously the
4:31
holy roman empire
4:33
um it was a an assortment of different
4:36
states
4:36
one thing that unified them is they all
4:38
spoke the same language
4:40
german but bismarck wanted to unify
4:42
germany
4:43
and actually make it a competitor and uh
4:47
to the british empire and so it had this
4:50
sudden uh cultural and industrial
4:53
revolution
4:54
and in that sort of um turmoil
4:57
a lot of the old ways the old um old
5:00
germany was left behind
5:02
and the thing about these wood cuts you
5:04
see is these are basically
5:06
an old uh german folk art and that's why
5:09
they
5:10
wanted to use them and bring them to the
5:11
fore and not only did they use the wood
5:13
cuts but if you look at the paintings
5:14
the paintings have that jagged harsh
5:17
feeling
5:17
of the wood cuts it was actually eric
5:20
heckle about down in the south of
5:22
germany
5:22
who brought that uh into use by die
5:26
brooker
5:27
we had the same in this country remember
5:29
with the industrial revolution we had
5:31
the pre-raphaelites
5:32
and william morris's arts and crafts
5:34
movement that was looking back to the
5:36
medieval guilds
5:38
but with the germans really they were
5:39
looking back to
5:41
folk art now this next picture of course
5:43
is a wonderful oil painting and one of
5:45
many wonderful oil paintings um
5:47
by kirschner of these women standing on
5:50
the corner what he was looking for in
5:52
these paintings um
5:54
and in these woodcuts is a what he
5:57
called a hieroglyph
5:58
which is basically he wanted to find an
6:00
image
6:01
which said so much said more than he can
6:05
put into words
6:06
uh something that would describe us um a
6:09
state or a situation
6:11
or something he wanted to talk about and
6:14
he would
6:14
recreate these in many different ways he
6:16
would do them in woodcuts he'd do them
6:18
as drawings he'd do them as dry point
6:20
prints you do them as oil paintings
6:22
and this is what we have with these
6:23
wonderful series of our women
6:26
um standing on the corner of berlin
6:29
streets
6:30
now kirschner did serve for a short time
6:33
in the first world war uh it drove him
6:37
you know very ill he had a breakdown
6:40
he saw a doctor and the doctor
6:42
recognized him as a famous modern artist
6:44
and he said
6:45
kirschner you shouldn't be here fighting
6:47
you're part of germany's culture so he
6:49
managed to get him
6:50
actually discharged but he had to stay
6:53
in the sanatorium
6:55
and after the war he moved to
6:57
switzerland
6:58
and that's where this uh painting
7:00
self-portrait
7:01
as a sick person from 1918 was painted
7:05
um he looked you know in a very very bad
7:07
way he was in a bad way
7:08
but he made this home in switzerland and
7:10
he did wonderful paintings wonderful
7:12
woodcuts
7:13
in that environment however as uh nazism
7:17
grew in germany and his paintings were
7:19
being
7:20
confiscated and you know sometimes even
7:23
destroyed
7:24
he went from being a modern art hero in
7:27
germany
7:28
to somebody who was a disgrace a
7:30
degenerate
7:31
artist and when he found out that
7:34
hitler had annexed austria he
7:37
which was wasn't far from uh switzerland
7:40
where he was staying
7:41
he uh it was too much for him and he
7:44
went out
7:44
and shot himself the next artist i'd
7:48
like to look at is eric heckle
7:50
and this is his woodcut of two sailors
7:53
as i may have mentioned heckle was the
7:54
person who brought this
7:56
art form from the south of germany into
7:59
the movement and he was a particular
8:01
master of this you see these two
8:05
human figures very powerful within the
8:07
composition
8:09
he was also a great painter this is one
8:11
of his paintings
8:12
called franzi reclining from around 1910
8:16
and this was actually a young girl who
8:18
used to
8:19
uh pose in kirshner's studio and all the
8:23
die broker artists used to paint him and
8:25
it's all a little bit strange
8:27
because in fact she was rather under
8:30
aged and she was only 14.
8:32
so nowadays i think we would not feel
8:35
too happy about this
8:36
um but they were very anti-establishment
8:39
and um
8:41
she posed for them and she appears in a
8:43
lot of these paintings
8:44
this is a much nicer one this is called
8:46
day of glass from 1913.
8:49
you can see the influence of cubism
8:52
and the art from the south seas what uh
8:55
was referred to then i don't think we'd
8:57
call it this now but primitive art
8:59
um was a huge influence it spoke of
9:02
um human beings in their most primordial
9:05
innocent nature
9:06
and this is what they wanted to get back
9:08
to these were a group of people who
9:10
sometimes used to
9:11
sunbathe naked which was is still today
9:14
not
9:14
an unusual thing in germany and it's all
9:17
about you know getting back to nature
9:19
that type of thing
9:21
now for my money one of the most
9:23
talented and
9:24
long certainly long living members of
9:28
the
9:28
um movement was carl schmidt rotloff who
9:31
lived from 1884 to 1976.
9:34
he was a great painter he was also a
9:37
very very great woodcutter
9:38
um you see this uh print here which is
9:41
of um
9:42
uh biblical scene christ healing and um
9:46
for me my money he's he's one of the
9:48
most interesting people certainly
9:49
somebody i would um
9:51
look up and find out more about if we
9:54
turn to his paintings now this one here
9:56
um is called river landscape with bridge
9:59
and
10:00
train from around about 1910. can you
10:03
see how he takes impressionism much
10:05
further than impressionists would go
10:07
impressionists were all about
10:09
turning light into painting sometimes in
10:11
order to get the vibrancy that they saw
10:14
in nature they would take liberties with
10:16
the color
10:17
and they would put complementaries
10:18
together and use colors that weren't
10:20
actually there but made the thing look
10:22
more real
10:23
are really um schmidt rotloff takes it
10:25
to another level
10:26
it reminds me of another artist very
10:28
much um we'll be looking at emil nolda
10:31
this is a very powerful very expressive
10:33
dynamic
10:34
handling of the paint and here finally
10:38
we have a still life with red flowers
10:41
from around 1921 he um served in the war
10:45
but the experience
10:46
did not affect his work now this is
10:48
something we'll come across
10:49
time and time again with german artists
10:51
of the early 20th century
10:53
you will have some who were really
10:55
damaged by the first world war people
10:57
like max beckmann um
10:58
kirschner and a whole load more um and
11:02
then you get some people like
11:03
um carl schmidt rotloff and paul clay
11:06
who we're going to look at later
11:08
how their approach is when they came out
11:11
of the war
11:11
they basically just wanted to forget it
11:13
and they wanted to turn back to their
11:14
first love they wanted to turn to
11:16
something rather
11:17
beautiful and they found that in
11:19
painting and that's really how he
11:21
survived but you'll notice in this uh
11:23
painting how his um
11:25
colors have become solid blocks of color
11:28
a very great
11:29
artist i think you will agree
11:32
we aren't going to look at otto mueller
11:34
we're going to look instead
11:36
at um another artist max peckstein
11:39
because i think he's
11:40
a very interesting artist he was
11:42
different to the other
11:43
[Music]
11:44
die broker painters he was more
11:47
influenced by
11:48
french thinking and we've looked at
11:51
before on this course how
11:53
the french impressionism didn't go down
11:56
well with all
11:58
german artists they saw it as something
11:59
very foreign and they wanted to create a
12:01
distinctly german
12:03
art but peckstein was influenced in his
12:06
colouring
12:07
by the um by the french artist you may
12:10
notice something from the fovist
12:12
something from matisse and duran people
12:14
like that
12:15
but he actually annoyed kirschner and
12:18
also
12:19
um max paxton was jewish and sometimes
12:21
this um
12:22
anti-semitism came out in the group
12:25
which is a great pity
12:26
but this is called frieda vermel in
12:28
yellow dress quite beautiful
12:30
and the next painting we're going to
12:32
look at is called still life
12:34
with exotic sculptures from 1913.
12:38
and i think you'll agree this is a very
12:41
very beautiful painting
12:43
if you look at it some parts are
12:45
actually like
12:46
cezanne so there was a very very
12:48
distinct
12:49
french influence there
12:52
i'd like us to turn now to another great
12:54
german painter emil nalder
12:57
naldo was um for a while a member of die
13:00
brooker but he was actually a lot
13:01
older than the others he was born in
13:04
1867
13:05
and about you know 20 or so years up um
13:08
earlier and he kind of found the young
13:12
people in the group a little bit
13:13
embarrassing you know they used to sit
13:16
painting while spouting out nietzsche
13:18
and things like that which annoyed him
13:20
and so he eventually left and he went
13:24
off
13:24
to the um the north of germany near the
13:28
baltic
13:29
and uh but this painting here from 1909
13:31
this is called the last supper he did
13:32
quite a few
13:33
biblical paintings he also showed a
13:35
great interest in
13:36
ethnic art um the art of um
13:40
you know pre-industrialized peoples uh
13:43
which is which is interesting when you
13:45
find out what you
13:46
know about him um here's a wonderful
13:49
painting called a fresh day at the
13:50
seaside which again
13:52
i think is remarkably like that karl
13:54
schmidt rotseloff
13:56
and i yep he's a great great painter
13:59
um uh yeah i i i would um
14:03
certainly research him uh when he left
14:07
dresden and he went off to be near the
14:09
baltic he did a wonderful series of
14:12
watercolors
14:13
uh landscapes and especially flowers
14:17
an enormous amount of flower paintings
14:19
in this wonderful
14:21
free colorful um
14:24
technique where he really allowed the
14:26
paint to run
14:27
and it to go really free uh
14:30
um these these are you know i think
14:33
among some of my
14:34
favorite paintings but the terrible sad
14:36
thing about emil nolda
14:37
is when national socialism um started to
14:41
get big in germany he actually joined
14:44
the
14:44
nazi party he actually became one of
14:46
hitler's brown shirts
14:48
uh when later of course he was denounced
14:51
as a degenerate artist
14:52
so joining the nazi party did his career
14:55
no good
14:56
i can't help thinking actually with
14:58
nolda and with many people
15:00
joining the nazi party was an act of
15:01
naivety not an
15:03
act of hate well that's what i like to
15:04
think anyway i leave you
15:06
to decide what you think so let us
15:09
turn to another movement um
15:13
one which there is no evidence as far as
15:16
i know
15:16
that they were aware of die broker um
15:20
certainly not die broker starting this
15:22
was a movement that was started in
15:24
munich and it was started by a russian
15:27
artist called vasily kandinsky
15:30
and this is a painting from 1903 called
15:33
the blue rider which is of course what
15:35
de blau writer
15:36
actually means kandinsky
15:39
was a russian who studied anthropology
15:42
and he became
15:43
incredibly fascinated by the work
15:46
of russian peasants the beautiful
15:49
colorful
15:50
rather crude but wonderful paintings
15:52
that he saw
15:53
and he became very fascinated by that
15:55
and he went over to become a painter
15:58
he was also an incredible organizer he
16:00
was
16:01
constantly trying to get movements off
16:03
the ground
16:04
organizing exhibitions and these
16:07
movements didn't work but eventually he
16:10
uh got double writer moving
16:13
um his great influence was russian folk
16:16
tales
16:17
his mother who used to read these folk
16:20
tales to him
16:21
at night and they filled his his um head
16:24
with wonderful
16:26
pictures wonderful you know images and
16:28
this is at first
16:29
what he wanted to create however
16:33
he started to move towards abstraction
16:36
and here we have landscape with archer
16:38
from 1909
16:40
and um his uh he was
16:44
also very very interested in music he
16:46
actually used to refer to his paintings
16:48
as colored music
16:50
and when you look at a painting like
16:52
this you might at first think that it's
16:53
an abstract but then you look you
16:55
realize that it's actually got figures
16:57
in it and it's all very much like a
16:59
fairy tale there's archers and there's
17:01
people
17:02
dashing across landscapes and this is
17:04
really the
17:05
inspiration for the narrative of the
17:07
painting but more and more he wanted to
17:10
actually create
17:11
uh paintings which were just pure color
17:15
he was in a relationship with a
17:18
german lady by the name of gabrielle
17:20
munter
17:21
and um there when their relationship
17:24
broke up they still remained friends
17:26
um sadly with women
17:29
the um in those days uh they had to be
17:32
chaperoned they couldn't go to the
17:34
places that men went
17:35
so a lot of her subject matter like the
17:39
paintings of late 19th century you know
17:41
people like mary cassatt and berte
17:42
morisso
17:43
the subject matter is very domestic
17:45
because that's what she saw
17:47
this one is called breakfast of the
17:49
birds from 1934
17:52
and the next painting i'm going to show
17:54
you is
17:55
child with teddy bear but i think we do
17:58
need to
17:58
mention the fact that although when we
18:00
talk about these movements we work may
18:02
highlight certain individuals there were
18:05
lots of people involved and it wasn't
18:07
just
18:08
men and gabriel munter was
18:11
i think a very exceptional painter
18:16
now let us look at the wonderful paul
18:18
clay who was
18:19
swiss he had studied under the symbolist
18:23
artist
18:24
von stuck as had kandinsky
18:27
he paul clay was a great violinist he
18:30
actually could have made a career as a
18:32
solo violinist but he turned to art
18:34
um he lived as a house husband his wife
18:37
went out and talked
18:38
um piano lessons whilst he stayed home
18:40
with the baby
18:41
and he wrote for a living theater
18:43
reviews and
18:44
art exhibition reviews but he um
18:48
carried on painting his paintings tend
18:50
to be on a very small scale probably
18:52
because he was working at
18:53
the kitchen sink but this um painting
18:56
you see here
18:56
european quarter near tunis is from a
18:59
sketchbook
19:00
based on watercolors um there was a trip
19:04
around north africa and he did these
19:06
wonderful wonderful
19:08
watercolors as you can see
19:11
now paul clay
19:15
uh did serve in the first world war
19:17
towards the
19:18
end um at when he came out as i
19:21
mentioned he
19:22
didn't um brood on it he didn't brood on
19:25
the horror of it
19:26
the only painting where he really um
19:29
looks at
19:30
the the morbidity and the the the the
19:33
horror
19:34
of the war is this painting called death
19:36
and fire from 1916
19:38
and this is um was painted
19:42
where big when his friend franz mark
19:44
died at the front
19:46
so it's about horror it's about his loss
19:49
and is about you know the the grieving
19:52
for this great friend
19:54
another friend of paul clays was this
19:56
artist august mack
19:59
this is a painting called torrent in the
20:02
forest from 1910
20:04
interestingly enough when you look at it
20:05
it's not so much like a german
20:08
expressionist painting it looks more
20:10
like something from the pond arvin
20:12
school at the end of the 19th century
20:14
when gogan was leading the way
20:17
uh developing a new style of a painting
20:21
which is part of what we call post
20:23
impressionism
20:24
i think this is a lovely surprise but
20:27
what
20:27
august mac was most known for was
20:30
paintings like this this one's called
20:32
promenade from 1913
20:34
and uh these are basically based on
20:37
people walking through parks or
20:39
zoological gardens
20:41
in munich and they have a nice kind of
20:44
relaxing
20:45
sunday afternoon feel about them
20:48
obviously inspired a little bit by
20:50
cubism if you look at the angles the
20:52
style of them
20:53
um not i don't think the greatest um
20:56
double
20:56
writer painter but certainly these are
20:59
very very
21:00
enjoyable now of course we've mentioned
21:04
franz mark and here we have a painting
21:08
called the little blue horses from 1911.
21:12
mark's paintings were concerned with the
21:14
need for harmony and union with nature
21:17
believing that animals achieved this
21:19
harmony more sex successfully than human
21:21
beings
21:22
he used them for the subject matter of
21:24
his paintings
21:25
early in his career he painted graceful
21:28
and lyrical horses
21:29
cows and deer inhabiting beautiful and
21:32
peaceful landscapes
21:34
the scenes were painted with bright pure
21:36
colours
21:37
and filled with light
21:40
wow this next painting two cats blue and
21:44
yellow from 1912. the way he used to do
21:48
these paintings is he used to paint the
21:50
um create the painting first in tones of
21:53
gray
21:54
and then he used to paint the actual
21:56
animal and pick a particular color a
21:58
very strong color
21:59
and then he used to over the top of the
22:01
black and gray
22:02
he used to glaze over in whatever colors
22:05
he felt
22:06
complemented the central um
22:09
the central you know figure of of of the
22:12
cats or whatever animal
22:14
and then um finally for mark here is
22:18
deer in the woods
22:19
number two from 1914 this was of course
22:22
the uh
22:23
painting one of the paintings he did
22:25
before he was called up
22:26
and went off to fight at the front
22:30
before we go i just want to mention one
22:32
other artist his name is max beckmann
22:35
and he's a particular favorite of mine
22:38
beckmann lived from 1884 to 1950
22:42
he painted this painting crucifixion in
22:44
1909
22:46
and if you take a look at it it's very
22:47
very like the early symbolist painters
22:50
that we looked at the end of the 19th
22:52
beginning of the 20th century
22:54
he was very much an academic painter and
22:57
he was very very accomplished and very
22:59
proud
23:00
he disliked modern art completely and he
23:03
particularly
23:04
referred to franz mark's work as flat
23:07
as a dinner plate unlike many patriotic
23:10
germans he lis
23:11
enlisted in the army but the horrors of
23:14
world war one
23:15
made him want to paint in a new way that
23:18
expressed emotion
23:19
he felt that the old academic way of
23:22
painting
23:23
wasn't good enough for expressing the
23:25
horror
23:26
of what he saw of human beings doing
23:29
dreadful
23:29
things to each other and this is one of
23:32
his um early paintings from the
23:35
post-world war one era this is called
23:37
night painted somewhere between 1918 and
23:39
1919
23:41
it is not a pretty painting at all it is
23:43
a painting of a basement
23:45
where torture is going on and it's all
23:48
being carried out by respectable
23:50
middle class german people and there was
23:52
a lot of reaction
23:53
um in among german artists saying to the
23:56
middle classes and the respectable
23:58
people
23:59
you know you know how did you let this
24:01
happen well
24:02
are you going to change your ways you're
24:03
going to do something about it are you
24:05
going to let this
24:06
happen again and of course the horror is
24:08
of course they
24:09
it did happen again with the rise of the
24:12
nazis
24:12
but this is a very um powerful painting
24:15
one of the most um
24:16
interesting parts is you'll notice that
24:17
there's actually a phonograph
24:19
it's as if uh it's near the bottom of
24:22
the painting it's as if they're doing
24:23
all this
24:24
to music i wonder what music they would
24:26
be playing
24:29
however um beckman was a
24:32
you know he was um labeled as a
24:34
degenerate artist he had to get out
24:36
of germany with the rise of hitler first
24:39
of all he went to
24:40
amsterdam and then he went to
24:43
new york where he became quite a
24:45
successful
24:46
painter and teacher this is a painting
24:50
simply called
24:51
di pinto invernale or winter landscape
24:54
from 1930. this is typical of his work
24:59
um
25:00
it became far more um crude but direct
25:04
very expressive very you know just very
25:07
direct
25:08
the color was very strong with these
25:10
great big black
25:11
gashes like wounds delineating and
25:14
strengthening
25:15
the form i think he's a great great
25:17
painter
25:18
and i hope you've enjoyed this me
25:20
talking about one of my
25:22
favorite art movements thank you
25:47
you