Spaightwood Galleries

The title of this show is actually a misnomer; a more accurate title would indicate that this is the art that the Kaiser hated, that the right-wingers who helped to bring about the downfall of the Weimar Republic hated, and that the militarists who ultimately threw their support to the Nazis hated. And yet, it is still amisnomer: in a sense, the term German Expressionism really means Modernist works done in Germany and Austria from the late 19th century until the Nazis took control, after which the works went underground, but, in many cases, continued to be made until the artist making them died. Just as French Impressionism reallymeant Modernist works made in France by people who had in common only their rejection of the official art that preceded them and that dominated the salons when the artists whom we now call the Impressionists began trying to show their works. It spawned in due time other movements like Post-Impressionism, Pointilism, the Nabis, the Symbolists, and ultimately the modernists who turned away from these variants of their predecessors and gave birth to Cubism, Fauvism, and Surrrealism; so the German Modernists had varied interests: The artists of the Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) Group—Kandinsky, Klee, Munter, Marc, and Macke—were moving toward abstraction, the artists of Die Brücke (the Bridge), led by Erich Heckel, E. L. Kirchner, Max Pechstein, Emil Nolde, and Karl Schmidt-Rottlff were rejecting their immediate predecessors and trying to create an art that linked the great German artists of the Renaissance, especially Dürer, whose masterful woodcuts seemed the perfect vehicle for a new renaissance of German art, with an art for the present and the future. The first World War, which seemed to artists like Kokoschka and Dix to offer a chance to see heroism in action and perhaps to be heroic (Dix was a machine gunner, Kokoschka was a cavalry officer), quickly led instead to horror and mental breakdowns, and the aftermath of the war led to cynicism and disgust at the society that replaced the autocratic rule of the Kaiser. The Dadaists (including Hoch, Schlicter, and Grosz as well as Duchamp, Arp, and Picabia)) began with a feeling of disgust and hatred for the war and moved on to reject the values that allowed it to occur, nationalist politics and a culture of materialism. They rejected the conventions of their society and the art that had nurtured and sustained that society, cultivating a sense of the absurd and seeking artistic techniques to embody their contempt for it. The Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) group, including Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Rudolf Schlichter, and Georg Tappert, hoped through their art to change their society by, as Grosz wrote, convincing "the world that it was ugly, sick, and mendacious." Kollwitz and Barlach, whose work predated all of these movements, yet agreed politically and artistically in the need to hold a mirror up to society so that it might see how much it needed to change itself. Artists like Meidner and Hofer do not easily fit into these groups, yet are clearly of their time, Hofer seeking symbolic forms to suggest the possibility of a more ideal life and the reality of approaching disasters, Meidner imagining the apocaltpse to come and portraying the passionate intensity of those who would bring it about.

Selcted Bibliography: Stephanie Barron and Wolf-Dieter Dube, ed., German Expressionism: Art and Society (NY: Rizzoli, 1997); Stephanie Barron, et al, German Expressionist Prints and Drawings. The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for Expressionist Studies, Vol. 1 (LA: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1989); Stephanie Barron, ed, German Expressionism 1915-1925: The Second Generation (LA: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1988); Frances Carey and Anthony Griffiths, The Print in Germany 1880--1933: The Age of Expressionism (London: British Museum, 1984, 1993); Stephanie D'Allessandro, et al, German Expressionist Prints: The Marcia and Granvil Specks Collections (Milwaukee: Milwaukee Art Museum, 2003); Bruce Davis, German Expressionist Prints and Drawings. The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for Expressionist Studies, Vol. 2: Catalogue of the Collection (LA: Los Angeles County Museum of Art / Prestel, 1989);Bruce Davis, German Expressionist Prints and Drawings: The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies Elvejhem Museum of Art, The Graphic image: German Expressionist Prints (Madison: Elvejhem Museum of Art, 1983); Reinhold Heller, Brücke: German Expressionist Prints from the Granvil and Marcia Specks Collection (Evanston: Mary and Leight Block Gallery, Northwestern Uninversity, 1988); Orrel P. Reed Jr., German Expressionist Art: The Robert Gore Rifkind Collection—Prints, Drawings, Illustrated Books, Periodicals, Posters (Los Angeles: Frederick S. Wight Art Gallery, University of California, Los Angeles, 1977); Andrew Robison, ed., German Expressionist Prints from the Collection of Ruth and Jacob Kainen (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1985); Serge Sabarsky, Graphics of the German Expressionists (Mt. Kisco NY: Moyer Bell Ltd, 1984); Peter Selz, German Expressionist Painting (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957, 1974); Horst Uhr, Masterpeices of German Expressionism at the Detroit Institute of Arts (NY: Hudson Hills Press, 1982); Shane Weller, ed, German Expressionist Woodcuts (NY: Dover, 1994).