My First Degree Essay

Hi guys!
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 19^th century symbolism and how it evolved in the 20^th 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.