German Expressionism

German Expressionism

Feb 17, 2017
German Expressionism, evolving in Germany during the World Wars was the first modern movement in Germany, directly related to the critical political situation of the time.

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Welcome to MOOC’s online course on ‘Introduction to Modern Western Art’.
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Today, we will be looking at another significant art movement that took place in the first
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half of 20th century and it is known as German expressionism.
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The name suggests that the movement started from Germany and basically in cities like
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Munich, Dresden and also later in Berlin.
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But, because of its possibilities, because the power of the movement, it soon started
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spreading almost all over Europe, and though due to the origin of its place, the location
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the term German is always associated with a expressionism.
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But the idea of an expressionist art or expressionism as a movement became a global phenomenon.
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Now, in terms of the movement, it started around 1905 and it and 1907 and it went on
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for more than a decade.
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Expressionism can be defined as an art movement that came into being when artists became more
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concerned with expressing their feeling on an occurrence or object than with creating
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a photo realistic painting.
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And this holds true to many other movements also like futurism and cubism and fauvism.
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But expressionism as a movement occurred mostly in Germany and sometimes it is called German
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expressionism, also because it has a context, a very specific socio-political context.
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A socio-political situation, a kind of political anxiety that started during before the First
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World War which started at 1914, and a whole group of artists including painters, sculptors
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also writers, poets, musicians, even film makers, photographers they became quite upset
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and also they were extremely disappointed in the way art failed to respond to the contextual
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reality of the first half and the early part of 20th century at least in Germany.
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In France the scenario was already different as we have discussed before.
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In fact, the German artists were aware of the developments taking place in France at
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the end of the 19th century and in the beginning of the 20th century.
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They were influenced by the work of the post impressionists like Van Gogh, Cezanne, Matisse
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and two groups emerged and both of which the part of the German expressionism, one group
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is known as Die Brucke in English the bridge and the other one is Die Blaue Reiter in English
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the blue rider and both these groups scores.
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They work on this idea and they produced great amount of and beautiful works of art which
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all subscribed to the idea of expressionism in some way or the other.
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Now, the Die Brucke as a group it lasted from 1906 to 1912 and it’s a group of young architects
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in Dresden in Germany which formed an alliance and began painting together.
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They called themselves Die Brucke, which means the bridge for they felt that their art would
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be a bridge to a bright future and a way to communicate their utopian ideals to the society.
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Because they feeling this increasing gap between the society and art and they wanted to fill
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that gap up and probably that is why this term Die Brucke or the bridge came into being.
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Now, the artists of Die Brucke were critical of the intensely materialistic nature of German
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bourgeois society much like the idealistic youth of the 1960s they felt a return to nature
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would benefit society and uplift human beings, and that is the one of the reasons why you
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find in the way they painted the human figures or landscapes, and in the way they also located
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human figures in landscapes or amidst nature in their paintings there is something that
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is not artificial, not fabricated, not synthetic very natural, very primordial and also very
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organic.
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And in order to achieve the sense of primeval quality, primordial quality they give up
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once again the conventional academic methods of drawing and painting and resorted to something
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that is more instinctual, something that is more driven by impulse and emotion and as
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a result, when you look at their paintings you will find that the expressionist paintings
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have given birth to very interesting and different ideas about human form, about form and space
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relationship about even the look, gaze and the structure of human anatomy and definitely
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colors.
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A riot of colors can be seen in German expressionist paintings.
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And in terms of colors German expressionism can be connected to fauvism, yes whether they
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admit or acknowledge that or not, I have a strong feeling that German expressionist painters,
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they are greatly indebted to fauvism because fauvism was a first movement which showed
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the path to liberate color.
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Now, while the impressionist had worked hard to record exactly what they saw as natural
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light hit objects in a landscape, German expressionist allowed their own personalities to shape their
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work.
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This is very interesting.
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So, if an artist is having or going through a psychological crisis, then that artist allows
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himself of herself to be expressed or allows himself or herself to shape the art that your
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she is making.
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So, personal psyche or psychological condition is allowed to play a role in not only the
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subject matter they are choosing, but also in the very technique of art making.
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Now so, this is something they wanted to encourage, to allow their personalities to shape their
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works to see the hand of the artist in a work and it was something to encourage rather than
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avoided they believed.
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So, art then for them, art should not remain neutral or objective anymore there is no harm
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to make your art to allow your art to become very personal, very subjective and inseparably
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related to your personal traits.
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The artist of Die Brucke or the bridge were interested in extreme psychological states
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and psychological movements of psychological anguish, Munch, Edvard Munch, is perhaps the
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most obvious example of this a very well known painting by munch is called ‘The scream’
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painted much before German expressionism as a movement came into being this was painted
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in 1893 and as you already know German expressionism came into being in 1906.
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But though Munch had painted this painting several years before the German expressionist
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movement, the way Chirico anticipated surrealism we have seen that similarly Munch’s painting,
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at this particular painting ‘The scream’ almost anticipated German expressionism.
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So, it is not surprising that German expressionist painters would look up at a Munch as their
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role model, and this German expressionist painters were also interested in traditional
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German folklore and in the traditional wood block printmaking which was developed centuries
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earlier by German artist, Durer.
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They were particularly interested in the medieval art that is a pre classical, pre renaissance
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art where beauty going by the norm of the classical ideas was not the defining characteristic
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feature of any art, but pain, anguish, psychological state and elements of the subconscious not
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the ways surrealist state, but in the way German expressionists artists felt were also
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allowed to shape the art and definitely they avoided all kinds of illusionism.
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So, they were known as anti-illusionist artists and they used heavy outlines, very strong
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colors and there is certainly an influence of primitive art in German expressionist art
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styles particularly oceanic and African masks did leave a great influence and impact on
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the way German expressionist artists conceived their forms.
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Now, what is Die Brucke of course, it is a group that was founded in Dresden in 1905
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and it marked the beginning of modern art in Germany and the name indicated their faith
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in the art of the future because the bridge connects you with the future, which you are
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trying to envisage and which they saw in their own work.
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Now the principle members were of course, the famous ones were Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
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and then there were Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt Rottluff, Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein and the
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one of the founder members like Kirchner; he was interestingly not an art student, but
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an architecture student.
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So, the rejected academic tradition realism impressionism and they drew inspiration from
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the German medieval and German renaissance art to some extent and they also drew their
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inspiration from primitive art and of course, Van Gogh, Gauguin the fauvists and I need
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not mention again the famous Edvard Munch, the Norwegian artist.
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This is one more painting by Edward Munch painted in 1894.
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And you can see how these through this painting I mean one could almost a sense like a premonition
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like an anticipation, the birth of a expressionism few years later almost 12 years later.
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Now, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and if you look at his paintings, his harsh lines, then of
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course, its awkward anatomy you can see that how the painter is trying to dissolve that
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gap and the distance between the artist and the art, because art instead of letting art
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follow a certain given norm,
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these painters were trying to produce art in a way that the art, the procedure of painting
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the forms, the language, the idiom all together the style of art would follow a certain psychological
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makeup of the artists and their intentions.
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Hence you find as a result a lot of what is called for the want of better word ‘distortion’.
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For example, German expressionist paintings, in many paintings you find lot of elongations,
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presence of elongated figures and you also find figures being painted and drawn avoiding
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completely any kind of academic realism.
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So, over the years, it developed a style of its own.
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For example, when you look at this painting which depicts a very normal scene of a street
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scene in Berlin painted in 1913, even there the painting is not at least the feel of the
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painting is not very objective.
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It is not an objective, visual record of a street scene in Berlin; it is pretty obvious
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from the way the entire thing has been composed, and certain kind of spatial congestion has
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been deliberately created to make you feel a sense of suffocation despite the presence
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of some elegant men and women or for that matter this painting by Rotluff.
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where you can see the figures almost look like wooden figures like sculpted figures
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even their entire background the landscape also looks like a sculpted landscape.
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So, German expressionist painters beside selecting different kind of subject matters and different
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norms of painting they were also pretty free with this style of painting they were very,
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they were a kind of exploring an exercising the freedom to the extent that in their art,
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in their painting,
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you come across figuration, certain kind of figuration, and a certain kind of color pallet
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which you have not seen before and in this context, one should remember that it is German
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expressionist artists who also gave a lot of importance to another medium which was
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hitherto slightly neglected at least within the practice of art it was quite profusely
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used in the a field of reproduction and book publishing.
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But in the field of art, print making was a neglected medium.
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Now, German expressionist artists wanted to make their art accessible to common people
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and they also did not mind to get their art works painted in a number of editions.
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So, an art work loses its uniqueness because now you can have many editions because you
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are using the print making medium and b) because you have many editions many prints of the
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same word, it can reach a number of people.
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So, in a sense democratizing art was one of their issues
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that this German expressionist painters and artist followed an as a result, if you look
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at the whole range of German expressionist art, a substantial amount of the art was produced
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from that movement would be prints.
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It could be lithography, leno cart etching or wood cart beside of course, paintings.
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Emil Nolde was another impulsive painter from this movement
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who also used religious traditional subject matters like ‘The Last Supper’, but evidently
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there is an element of subversion, there is an element of ridicule and of course, Nolde
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is interpreting this iconic moment in a very contemporary setting and mindset.
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Nolde is also very well known for his extremely free brush troches what could be considered
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as a lack of knowledge about how to use pigment properly, he leaves his pigments often in
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a raw state.
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But, perhaps it is this rawness of his paintings that became, very much or that made his paintings
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very much a part of German expressionist art movement.
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Similarly, Erich Heckel one more artist from that same movement,
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and you can see in this paintings and print makings how Erich Heckel by using or taking
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advantage of the print making is creating angular faces with an expression of agony
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because in most of these art works created by German expressionist artists, the sense
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of agony is very evident and also tension, lot of tension, lot of agony nobody not a
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single figure in any German expressionist art seems to be very comfortable with what
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they are.
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Perhaps, this is a reflection of the agonized and a terrified world around and that is also
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one of the reasons why we have an artist like Kathe Kollwitz who way back from the 1893
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and 94 has been painting and drawing and also printing images of people who are depraved,
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people who are suffering, people for whom death is like a regular companion.
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And for example, when you look at this drawing by Kathe Kollwitz, you can see how Kathe;
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she is personally find death as a regular occurrence.
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And she is also trying to address humanity as a helpless kind of community, particularly
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those people belonging to those sections of society who have always been in utter poverty
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and neglect.
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So, Kathe Kollwitz is addressing these topics as her main concern.
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Then we have the Blaue Reiter in English; it could be call the Blaue Reiter another
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group or section in German expressionism and their publications and exhibition and exhibitions
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sought to find a common creative ground between the various expressionist art forms Wassily
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Kandinsky Marc France mark, then Macke August Macke were among its founder members.
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So, it is a second group of German artists formed which formed this group called the
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Die Blaue Reiter or the Blaue Reiter and the name came from a painting by one of the artists
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in the group Wassily Kandinsky these artists were centered in the southern German city
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of Munich whereas, the bridge was formed in Dresden.
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Now, Paul Klee was also a member of this group or at least associated with this group.
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There were many artist who were not necessarily or directly members of this group, but there
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were quite a few artists who were associated with this Blue Reiter’s school or Blue Reiter’s
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group.
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Within the context of German expressionism, Kandinsky’s paintings might look a little
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surprising because he is the only one or perhaps the first artist to cross the line into pure
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abstraction.
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The post impressionists had begun the movement away from realism, the fauves took liberties
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with color and abandoned the effort to portray space in three dimensions.
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The German expressionists were more interested in exploring psychological inner worlds than
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in faithfully depicting the natural world and now Kandinsky completely abandoned the
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necessity of using any reference, any subject matter of the or from the natural world.
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Now, look at this painting traverse line by Kandinsky; there is not a single element which
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has any referential connection with the outer world.
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What he is using here is pure abstract visual elements like lines, shapes of various kinds
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circles, triangles, spheres curvilinear lines arranged in a way that even the arrangement
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doesn’t make any sense to the real world.
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But of course, Kandinsky is one artist, who was doing these paintings, abstract paintings
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very consciously.
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and he was to a great extent successful also because he was able to connect his abstraction
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with the abstraction of music.
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Kandinsky was perhaps the first artist to have done that, and he often felt the experience
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of painting music on the canvas or on paper and music is something abstract music does
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not have any tangible visual reality.
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So this connection is pretty convincing and it is also more convincing
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Because not one or two, but throughout his life Kandinsky has painted 100s of such paintings
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exploring the possibilities of abstract visual elements either to create certain sensation
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of the world, certain deeper philosophical significance of the world or to create the
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experience of music through visual elements.
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And in the same group, we also have somebody like Beckmann who was painting purely figurative
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works, but once again never following the classical or traditional or realistic or representational
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world or norm he is also drawing his inspirations from mythologies old legends in stories, but
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basically there was a strong sense of a social interpretation in his works
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which becomes even more jocular and caricature-ish in the hands of for example, Otto Dix or in
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the hands of other German expressionist painters and artists who started ridiculing the society
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particularly the bourgeois society and one of the famous artists whose works you can
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see here is George Grosz who was extremely popular because of his uninhibited kind of
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caricatures and extremely incisive, sharp, political comments on the people whom he thought
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where exploiting the common people, exploiting the society and George Grosz was trying to
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unmask them.
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Now so there are certain defining characteristic features which shaped German expressionism
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and before we wind up, we must mention that in the context of German expressionism, apart
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from hundreds of paintings, few sculptures, lot of writings even a film was made in 1919;
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call ‘The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari’ and the fact that the goal was to express
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feelings in the most direct and extreme fashion possible, extreme distortion to express an
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inner emotional reality rather than surface appearances and it raises the possibility
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that this distortion is quite real for example, Caligari sees aspects of the world not readily
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apparent to others.
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So, ‘The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari’ is a kind of an epitome of German expressionist
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thoughts ideas and feelings it more or less embodies everything stylistic features, the
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philosophical framework, even the perceptual social and political take on the contemporary
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times, it manifests, it embodies everything their German expressionism is all about.
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In fact, if you go through the film even if you do not watch the film if you look at certain
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shots in sequences like this; you will be amazed to see that way back in 1919, almost
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100 years from back from today in ‘Cabinet of Doctor Caligori’ you could see an extreme
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experiment with the narrative structure, how the legends are were being continuously upturn
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and subverted and the elements of super natural, horror, psychological issues and obvious leaning
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to distortion, stylize a stylization of sets then costumes of course, extremely macabre
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and bizarre makeups and very strange kind of acting and lighting, all handmade.
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So, German expressionism is not merely an art movement it was a cultural movement that
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left its impact deeply on the history of the modern art of the west.
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Thank you.