Long time no speak, beern crazy busy with work and uni.
No time to breathe and definitely no time to sleep!
So this is my first essay for my Fine Art degree course. It's pretty bad, and has half as many words as it should. =/
But I'm handing it in today and there is nothing else to say about it. So there!
How and why did the German Expressionists seek to fuse art and life?
Expressionism
is a style that allowed a generation of artists to represent and express their
feelings of life through art. The movement took place across Europe in the
1900s but was particularly influential in Germany. It was a pivotal motion for
art in the 20th century. It was a movement influenced by aspects of primitive,
symbolism, post-impressionist and secessionism.
Leading the
way into Expressionism are artists such as Edvard Munch and Vincent van Gogh.
Munch's works; 'Vampire', 'Anxiety' and more famously 'The Scream' paved a way
forward to a looser more expressive way of painting. His use of bold colours
and expressive mark making was highly influential to the Die Brucke movement of
1905.
From this painting we can
see how expressionists were influenced by late 19th century
symbolism and how it evolved in the 20th century. The free
expressive brush marks and the distortion of the character’s torso and face
foreshadow the expressionist movement.
The
aspirations of expressionists was to convey emotion, it was about creating an
ideal rather than joining the reality of a progressive time. During the height
of expressionism the world was changing quickly and followers of he movement
longed for a simpler life. They rejected conventional life in the city,
retreating to countryside cottages where they could act out their fantasies of
living a more primitive lifestyle. They were obsessed with making art part of
life instead of the traditions of gallery and museum pieces.
The idea of
getting back to nature was a popular concept amongst the expressionists. They
looked towards Aborigine, Polynesian and African cultures; those thought of as
simplistic lifestyles, they acted out these ambitions away from the city,
hoping to combine life and art like these cultures had done for centuries.
The
expressionists aimed to describe feelings visually, exaggerating features to
make it seem more expressive. They made more vibrant, contrasting colours to
create moods. Distorting perspective, proportions and shapes was the man
feature of the expressionists. They had less emphasis on realism and often
portrayed their own experience of the world whether it was a street scene or
representation of a dream, often a fusion of the two.
Die Brucke
was a movement that stemmed from expressionism that began in Dresden, Berlin in
1905. Founded by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel and Karl
Schmidt-Rottluff; the four students aspired to find new ways of artistic
expressionism. They played on aspects of life like landscapes and nudes,
distorting them radically to evoke moods or ideas. Shapes became very basic, proportions
and perspectives are altered.
The idea of
primitive art intrigued the Die Brucke group. The ability to merge art and life
was a foreign concept from the fast paced city life they had grown to resent.
Primitive art was not recognised as art by those who created it. It was part of
their everyday life, not as something to admire but to use. Expressionists found
the simplistic art very real and emotive, it inspired them to produce their own
art using their own life to create simplistic works of the places they visited every
day.
Cabarets
were a place for political satire, perfect for the expressionist views and
their rejection of the industrialization and humanization of the city. As a
regular visit of the expressionists it was natural to begin to present the
cabaret scene within their art in a further attempt to fuse life and art.
Circuses
were also at the height of interest for the expressionists; here they found
atypical models that were perfect for representing their disdain for the unification
of the population and their interest in primitive and African art.
Kirchner was
particularly interested in the connection between life and art. He hired two
black circus artists as models; Sam and Milly, and painting them in every day
scenarios. These paintings shocked audiences as they were shameless and mocked
modern life.
In conclusion,
the expressionists sought to combine life and art by living out their primitive
fantasies; they rejected the modern ways of the city and spent time in the
countryside ‘getting back to nature’. However I personally feel that the things
they did were acts of art and producing work to be a fusion of life an art was
a forced process and never really became what they wanted it to be. Their art
was still presented and never really became part of everyday life.
