Stephano

Hoy voy andando en Bicicleta hacia otra noche más en Tangoloft, cuando un pensamiento me atraviesa y, luego de confrontarlo con el cosmos y ver que el mismo me respondía de manera nítida certificandome que el pensamiento estaba en concordancia con miles de variables que existían en ese momento, lo tomo en el cuerpo: “Quiero ser artista en Berlin”. Respiro y pedaleo en silencio. “Quiero volver a ser pintor, interesante… bueno, no tengo mucho tiempo, pero tendré que ir hacia ello.” Eso fue todo lo que pude pensar.

Esa misma noche apareció en Tangoloft un muchacho italiano, muy bonito y con una energía vital activa y atenta. Me contó que era pintor y que se había animado a acercarse a la milonga porque quería aprender Tango. Le comenté de mi pensamiento en la bicicleta y le pedí si podía ver su arte. Relieve de oleo manipulado con espátula en tamaños grandes. Me gustó lo que vi. Seguí trabajando… hasta que recordé que ya había visto esta pintura. Me acerqué y le pregunté conocía a gente de Argentina. Me dijo que claro, había tenido una pareja de Argentina y era, además, su cultura preferida. Hablabamos en español, el cual había aprendido mediante estas dos razones. Le pregunté si conocía a una chica llamada Mica y me dijo que si, la pulga, su Mica.

Mica me había llevado a una cena en la casa de Stephano en diciembre de 2021, cuando mi atelier de arte había cerrado por la segunda cuarentena de Covid y yo me alojaba en la casa de Johnny, cuyo perro había quedado solo en Berlín porque Johnny había quedado barado en centroamérica. Ese perro argentino, Buddy, me dio hogar en los momentos exactos en los que necesité un techo en Berlín y ese tiempo era uno muy especial porque cuidadndo a Buddy viví dos meses gratis en Friederichsain, Berlin.

Durante ese tiempo escribí un Noctorio (recopilación de sueños sucedidos en 8 noches seguidas) y que inició mi proceso de transición, desconección de la matrix más central de mi propia psicología y un Reset total. Durante unas tres semanas estuve en un estado de ensoñación en los que dormía 4 horas, pintaba 8 horas, dormía 8 horas, pintaba 4 horas, dormía 4 horas, pintaba… y durante este tiempo terminé las pinturas “Nena 10” y “WatschahuerStrasse”.

A Mica le llegó en lo profundo “Nena 10” y me introdujo la canción: “La nena no llora” de El cuarteto de nos.

Mica me invitó a cenar en lo de Stephan, donde vivía tb un artista del collage digital llamado Camilo. Recuerdo muy bien que tuvimos una impresión mutua muy profunda, artística y de respeto con Stephan, pero alguna razón Mica decidió que no me pondría en contacto con Stephan cuando le pregunté si podría tener su contacto al día siguiente.

Y acá está él mismo casi 4 años más tarde.

Jo en fascinación por reencontrarnos y Stephano agradecido eternamente porque pudo mediante mi vivencia y los mates a media noche entrar en la psicología del mundo del Tango.

French vs German expressionism

French And German Expressionism Compared!

https://wallector.com/en/blog/post/french-and-german-expressionism-compared#:~:text=Whilst%20French%20Expressionism%20proposed%20a,color%20and%20using%20firm%20outlines.
French And German Expressionism Compared!

The Salon of 1905

In 1905, while entering the eighth room in the Salon d’Automne, the art critic Louis Vauxcelles saw a traditional statue surrounded by violently colored paintings, and uttered: “Here is Donatello among the beasts!”. Since that moment, the artists who had gathered at the Salon were called “Fauves”, i.e. wild beasts. Among others, Henri MatisseAndré Derain, and Maurice de Vaminckgathered to establish the main avant-garde movement developing in France during that same year: Fauvism. The group had a short life – they broke up a few years later, in 1908 – owing to the lack of a specific and defined program, and to the increasing success of Cubism, a movement that aimed at limiting the absolute and dissolute freedom of too expressive colors, and at rather exalting forms and lines inside a definite space. One of the reasons that Fauvism lost its initial energy was the same one for which it developed itself at first, namely the celebration of the painting technique as artistic expression, and of color as explosive and emotional power capable of giving life and form to paintings.

Unlike contemporaneous German artists, who favored gloomy atmospheres and dramatic subject matters, French Expressionists distinguished themselves for the chromatic liveliness and for “the joy of life” that they wished to convey in their artworks. No more verisimilitude with nature, but only personal, intimate, and subjective feelings of reality, which becomes concrete through the propulsive and explosive charge of colors, commonly used for creating large flat fields; color is completely disconnected from perceivable reality, adapting to the subjective sensations that the artist wishes to convey. One of the pioneers of Expressionism was the Belgian artist James Ensor (1860-1949). His production deeply influenced the following art movements; in particular, his brushwork and use of colors could be considered early Expressionist, and his subjects, often characterized by a grotesque vein between irony and gravity, led the way to other avant-garde movements, such as Surrealism and Dadaism.

Henri Matisse 

The most famous exponent of French Expressionism is Henri Matisse (1869-1954); all his artistic production is pervaded by a very expressive use of colors. Vivid, brave, energetic, all his works are two-dimensional. His painterly activity, unfolding decade after decade away from mundane life, did not exclude an abundant graphic production. In the graphic oeuvre of Matisse, the line takes on new vitality, and becomes a means to express impetuous forms, even without the use of color. A distinctive trait, in the work of Matisse, is also the decorative element: surfaces adapt well to stylized vegetal decorations and to Eastern elements, derived from Japanese fashion that had been developing since the mid-19th century.

“Die Brücke”

Whilst French Expressionism proposed a certain use of color to express joy and vitality, German Expressionist painters chose likewise expressive artistic directions, exalting the energy of color and using firm outlines. The German group split in two opposite movements: from one side, the artists of “Die Brücke” (The Bridge), led by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, and Max Pechstein; from the other side, the group of “Der Blaue Reiter” (The Blue Rider), founded by Vasilij Kandinsky and Franz Marc in 1911 in Monaco. “The Blue Rider” was a broad long-term phenomenon; the artworks were characterized by an extreme abstraction of forms and by a preference for fantasy, dream, and imagination. The artists of “Die Brücke”, on the other hand, proposed an energetic, firm, and strongly ideological language, characterized by the use of vivid and contrasting colors, and by violent anti-natural figures. The employment of xylography, together with wooden sculptures, spread widely among German Expressionists, appreciating especially their expressive qualities.
They also preferred subjects who expressed the sorrow of the human condition, through the distortion of bodies, the use of high contrasts and of rigid fragmented outlines. Themes such as war and Northern mythology were much explored.

Expressionism in Germany and France: From Van Gogh to Kandinsky

https://unframed.lacma.org/2014/06/05/expressionism-in-germany-and-france-from-van-gogh-to-kandinsky
June 5, 2014

Today the term Expressionism is widely considered to designate a distinctly German movement. In its beginnings in the early 20th century, however, Expressionism was not assigned to a specific nationality. The movement evolved within a lively cosmopolitan atmosphere in Europe, where German and French artists responded to new developments in modern art with brightly colored and spontaneously rendered canvases. Expressionism in Germany and France: From Van Gogh to Kandinsky, which opens this Sunday in the Resnick Pavilion at LACMA, proposes an inquiry not only about artistic influence, but also about culture and geography. Where did Expressionism come from? How did it relate to national boundaries? “Van Gogh struck modern art like lightning,” a German observer once said about the influence of this pioneering modern artist’s work on artists in Germany in the 1910s. The work of Vincent van Gogh—who died in relative obscurity 15 years earlier—was finally becoming widely available due to a network of cultural exchange between Germany and France in the form of exhibitions; burgeoning public and private collections; trade on the art market; and travel by artists, dealers, and museum directors.

Vincent van Gogh, Wheat Field with Reaper (Harvest in Provence) (Champ de blé avec moissonneur), 1889, Museum Folkwang. Photo Credit: bpk, Berlin / Museum Folkwang/ Art Resource, NY Vincent van Gogh, Wheat Field with Reaper (Harvest in Provence) (Champ de blé avec moissonneur), 1889, Museum Folkwang. Photo Credit: bpk, Berlin / Museum Folkwang/ Art Resource, NY

Wheatfield with Reaper (Champ de ble avec moissonneur), 1889, was the first work by Van Gogh to enter a German museum. Purchased in 1902 by collector Karl Ernst Osthaus, it was shown at his private Folkwang Museum in Hagen. The avid collecting and exhibition of works by Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne, and others were complemented by lively critical discussions in illustrated art periodicals and books, notably publications by art critic Julius Meier-Graefe, as well as among artists through correspondence and conversation at such meeting points as the Café des Westens in Berlin and the Café du Dôme in Paris. German art dealers such as Wilhelm Uhde and Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler opened galleries in Paris and were instrumental in introducing Henri Rousseau and Pablo Picasso to the larger public. German artists Emil Nolde and Paula Modersohn-Becker studied at the Académie Julian and the Académie Colarossi in Paris, while the galleries Bernheim-Jeune, Durand-Ruel, and Ambroise Vollard offered Alexei Jawlensky, Wassily Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter, and many others the opportunity to discover not only Van Gogh but works by the Nabis, the Neo-Impressionists, Cézanne, and Gauguin, among others.

Paul Gauguin, Swineherd (detail), 1888, gift of Lucille Ellis Simon and family in honor of the museum's twenty-fifth anniversary Paul Gauguin, Swineherd, 1888, gift of Lucille Ellis Simon and family in honor of the museum’s 25th anniversary

Exhibitions were especially important in exposing German artists to the most recent trends from France. Annual exhibitions such as the Salon d’Automne or the Salon des Indépendants were also an occasion to discover the work of the French avant-garde. For instance, Gauguin’s Swineherd (Le Gardien de porcs), 1888 was presented at the 1906 Salon d’Automne, which also included works by Jawlensky and Kandinsky. Beginning in the late 19th century, exhibitions in Berlin, Dresden, and Munich presented in-depth surveys of Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism.

Paul Gauguin, Haystacks in Brittany (Les Meules / Le champ de pommes de terre), 1890, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., gift of the W. Averell Harriman Foundation in memory of Marie N. Harriman, 1972.9.11, image courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Paul Gauguin, Haystacks in Brittany (Les Meules / Le champ de pommes de terre), 1890, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., gift of the W. Averell Harriman Foundation in memory of Marie N. Harriman, 1972.9.11, image courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Beginning in 1904–5, around the same time of the birth of Expressionism, exhibitions in Germany also made the works of Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, and (eventually) Henri Matisse widely available. Gauguin’s Haystacks in Brittany (Les Meules / Le Champ de pommes de terre), 1890, was exhibited in 1905 in the first major exhibition of Gauguin’s work in Germany, which was organized by the progressive museum director Harry Count Kessler in Weimar. In Berlin, the forward-looking director of the National Gallery, Hugo von Tschudi, started buying modern French art, while Paul Cassirer was among the first to exhibit Van Gogh’s works in Germany at his commercial gallery. Cassirer organized numerous exhibitions that also travelled to other German cities such as Dresden. It was there that the exhibition of Van Gogh’s work was shown at Galerie Arnold in 1905, generating great excitement among the artists of the Brücke, the first Expressionist group, founded only a few months before the exhibition opened. Van Gogh’s spontaneous and vivacious brushwork and departure from local color (where leaves are green and skies are blue) in favor of a deep emotional engagement expressed through color (where skies can become green, as in Van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Reaper) offered an entirely new avenue away from what members of the Brücke regarded as a restrictive reliance on perception alone, typical of both Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism. The Brücke artists decried this tendency to be “the accidental, merely frugally natural impression” to which they preferred a more emotionally felt “inner” experience. The work of these artists—Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, joined later by Cuno Amiet, Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein, and others—soon exploded in bright colors, the characteristics of which can be seen in representative works in Expressionism in Germany and France. At the same time that this activity was taking place in Berlin, back in Paris, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, and Matisse (the latter two having been introduced to one another at a Van Gogh exhibition) joined Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy, Albert Marquet, and others to seek an alternative to Impressionism that would focus on bold colors and vivacious brushwork. They exhibited their findings at the 1905 Salon d’Automne, in which Jawlensky and Kandinsky were also shown. Confronted on this occasion by such works as Matisse’s Open Window, Collioure (La Fenêtre ouverte, Collioure), 1905 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), critic Louis Vauxcelles coined the term Fauves (or “wild beasts”) subsequently used to describe the work of these French artists. The painter Max Pechstein saw the Fauves’ colorful paintings while living in Paris three years later, and their influence may have informed his casual approach in his Young Girl (Junges Mädchen), 1908 (cover of this magazine).

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Reclining Nude in Front of Mirror (Liegender Akt vor Spiegel), 1909–10, Brücke-Museum, Berlin (Inv.-Nr. 31/72), © Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Courtesy Ingeborg & Dr. Wolfgang Henze-Ketterer, Wichtrach/Bern. Photo © Brücke-Museum, Berlin, photographer: Roman März Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Reclining Nude in Front of Mirror (Liegender Akt vor Spiegel), 1909–10, Brücke-Museum, Berlin (Inv.-Nr. 31/72), © Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Courtesy Ingeborg & Dr. Wolfgang Henze-Ketterer, Wichtrach/Bern. Photo © Brücke-Museum, Berlin, photographer: Roman März

Soon the Fauves were being exhibited in Germany, including in an exhibition in Dresden, in which the Brücke artists also participated. Kirchner and Pechstein saw the 1909 Berlin exhibition of Matisse’s work (hung by the artist himself) at Paul Cassirer and informed Heckel via a postcard that it was “wild.” Indeed Kirchner must have been overpowered by Matisse’s experimentation with composition and space—it is hard to ignore the Frenchman’s influence on Kirchner’s Reclining Nude in Front of Mirror (Liegender Akt vor Spiegel), 1909–10.

Vincent Van Gogh, Pollard Willows at Sunset, Arles (Saules au coucher du soleil, Arles), 1888, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands, Photo Credit: Art Resource, NY Vincent van Gogh, Pollard Willows at Sunset, Arles (Saules au coucher du soleil, Arles), 1888, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands, Photo Credit: Art Resource, NY

In Munich, Van Gogh’s Pollard Willows at Sunset (Saules au coucher du soleil), 1888 was shown at the Moderne Kunsthandlung gallery in 1908. The Blaue Reiter group, established in 1911, was well aware of current artistic trends in Paris. The group’s founding members—Kandinsky, Jawlensky, Münter, and Marianne Werefkin—frequently sojourned in Paris and presented their works at the Salon d’Automne and the Salon des Indépendants. The spectacular colors of Fauvism first found their way into their art beginning in 1908, when the group started to spend their summers in the alpine village of Murnau, where they responded to the subtle atmospheric light of the region. This palette is reflected in Jawlensky, Münter, and Werefkin’s flamboyant landscapes as well as in the already well-established abstraction of Kandinsky’s Sketch I for Painting with White Border (Entwurf zu Bild mit weißem Rand), 1913. Neither of these paintings is imaginable without the experience of Murnau, nor would they be possible without Fauvism. Yet, each original work was created by a mature artist who took a fully independent direction.

Wassily Kandinsky, Sketch I for Painting with White Border, 1913, Phillips Collection, © 2013 Wassily Kandinsky/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris, photo © The Phillips Collection Wassily Kandinsky, Sketch I for Painting with White Border, 1913, Phillips  Collection, © 2014 Wassily Kandinsky/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris, photo © The Phillips Collection

Franz Marc and August Macke soon came in contact with the chromatic abstraction of Robert Delaunay, whose colorful “simultaneous” paintings were exhibited in the first Blaue Reiter exhibition of 1911, which was organized by Kandinsky and Marc. This experience caused Franz Marc to repaint his Stony Path (Mountains/Landscape) (Steiniger Weg [Gebirge/ Landschaft]), 1911 (repainted 1912) with wonderful results. Kandinsky and Marc also explored in their paintings folk art and constructions of the “primitive”—inspired by the paintings of Rousseau, which they illustrated in their Blaue Reiter Almanach. (Rousseau’s paintings will be examined in an entirely new light in the scholarly catalogue.)

Franz Marc, Stony Path (Mountains/Landscape) Steiniger Weg (Gebirge/Landschaft), 1911 (repainted 1912), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, gift of the Women’s Board and Friends of the Museum, photo © San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Franz Marc, Stony Path (Mountains/Landscape) Steiniger Weg (Gebirge/Landschaft), 1911 (repainted 1912), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, gift of the Women’s Board and Friends of the Museum, photo © San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

The development of Expressionism took place in the cosmopolitan milieu of artists, galleries, and museums in both France and Germany in the early 20th century. The founding of groups nearly synonymous with the term Expressionism—the Brücke and the Blaue Reiter—came at a heightened moment during which artists working in Germany were paying close attention to the styles developing in France. This exhibition seeks to bring together French and German masterpieces accompanied by their essential historical context—when and where they were exhibited, collected, and seen by artists—so that they may be enjoyed again by us while also capturing the moment when the artists that made them were inspired by one another. Timothy O. Benson, Curator, Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies Editorial note: A version of this article originally appeared in the spring 2014 (volume 8, issue 2) of LACMA’s InsiderExpressionism in Germany and France: From Van Gogh to Kandinsky opens to the public this Sunday, June 8, but LACMA members can enjoy early access (for free!) during Member Previews beginning today. Simply click through the link and make your reservation in advance.

Expresionismo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressionism

Expressionism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Expressionism

Edvard MunchThe Screamc.1893, oil, tempera and pastel on cardboard, 91 × 73 cm, National Gallery of Norway, inspired 20th-century expressionists.
Years active The years before WWI and the interwar years
Location Predominantly Germany
Major figures Artists loosely categorized within such groups as Die BrückeDer Blaue Reiter; the Berlin Secession, the School of Paris and the Dresden Secession
Influenced American Figurative Expressionism, generally, and Boston Expressionism, in particular

Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas.[1][2] Expressionist artists have sought to express the meaning[3] of emotional experience rather than physical reality.[3][4]

Expressionism developed as an avant-garde style before the First World War. It remained popular during the Weimar Republic,[1] particularly in Berlin. The style extended to a wide range of the arts, including expressionist architecture, painting, literature, theatre, dance, film and music.[5] Paris became a gathering place for a group of Expressionist artists, many of Jewish origin, dubbed the School of Paris. After World War II, figurative expressionism influenced artists and styles around the world.

The term is sometimes suggestive of angst. In a historical sense, much older painters such as Matthias Grünewald and El Greco are sometimes termed expressionist, though the term is applied mainly to 20th-century works. The Expressionist emphasis on individual and subjective perspective has been characterized as a reaction to positivism and other artistic styles such as Naturalism and Impressionism.[6]

Etymology and history

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El GrecoView of Toledoc.1595/1610 is a Mannerist precursor of 20th-century expressionism.
Egon SchielePortrait of Eduard Kosmackc.1910, oil on canvas, 100 × 100 cm, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere

While the word expressionist was used in the modern sense as early as 1850, its origin is sometimes traced to paintings exhibited in 1901 in Paris by obscure artist Julien-Auguste Hervé, which he called Expressionismes.[7] An alternative view is that the term was coined by the Czech art historian Antonin Matějček in 1910 as the opposite of Impressionism: “An Expressionist wishes, above all, to express himself… (an Expressionist rejects) immediate perception and builds on more complex psychic structures… Impressions and mental images that pass through … people’s soul as through a filter which rids them of all substantial accretions to produce their clear essence […and] are assimilated and condensed into more general forms, into types, which he transcribes through simple short-hand formulae and symbols.”[8]

Important precursors of Expressionism were the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), especially his philosophical novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1892); the later plays of the Swedish dramatist August Strindberg (1849–1912), including the trilogy To Damascus (1898–1901), A Dream Play (1902), The Ghost Sonata (1907); Frank Wedekind (1864–1918), especially the “Lulu” plays Erdgeist (Earth Spirit) (1895) and Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora’s Box) (1904); the American poet Walt Whitman‘s (1819–1892) Leaves of Grass (1855–1891); the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881); Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863–1944); Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890); Belgian painter James Ensor (1860–1949);[9] and pioneering Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1856–1939).[5]

In 1905, a group of four German artists, led by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, formed Die Brücke (the Bridge) in the city of Dresden. This was arguably the founding organization for the German Expressionist movement, though they did not use the word itself. A few years later, in 1911, a like-minded group of young artists formed Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) in Munich. The name came from Wassily Kandinsky‘s Der Blaue Reiter painting of 1903. Among their members were Kandinsky, Franz MarcPaul Klee, and August Macke. However, the term Expressionism did not firmly establish itself until 1913.[10] Though mainly a German artistic movement initially[11][5] and most predominant in painting, poetry and the theatre between 1910 and 1930, most precursors of the movement were not German. Furthermore, there have been expressionist writers of prose fiction, as well as non-German-speaking expressionist writers, and, while the movement declined in Germany with the rise of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, there were subsequent expressionist works.

Expressionism is notoriously difficult to define, in part because it “overlapped with other major ‘isms’ of the modernist period: with FuturismVorticismCubismSurrealism and Dadaism.”[12] Richard Murphy also comments, “the search for an all-inclusive definition is problematic to the extent that the most challenging expressionists such as KafkaGottfried Benn and Döblin were simultaneously the most vociferous ‘anti-expressionists.'”[13]

What can be said, however, is that it was a movement that developed in the early twentieth century, mainly in Germany, in reaction to the dehumanizing effect of industrialization and the growth of cities, and that “one of the central means by which expressionism identifies itself as an avant-garde movement, and by which it marks its distance to traditions and the cultural institution as a whole is through its relationship to realism and the dominant conventions of representation.”[14] More explicitly, that the expressionists rejected the ideology of realism.[15]

The term refers to an “artistic style in which the artist seeks to depict not objective reality but rather the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse within a person”.[16] It is arguable that all artists are expressive but there are many examples of art production in Europe from the 15th century onward which emphasize extreme emotion. Such art often occurs during times of social upheaval and war, such as the Protestant ReformationGerman Peasants’ War, and Eighty Years’ War between the Spanish and the Netherlands, when extreme violence, much directed at civilians, was represented in propagandist popular prints. These were often unimpressive aesthetically but had the capacity to arouse extreme emotions in the viewer.[citation needed]

Expressionism has been likened to Baroque by critics such as art historian Michel Ragon[17] and German philosopher Walter Benjamin.[18] According to Alberto Arbasino, a difference between the two is that “Expressionism doesn’t shun the violently unpleasant effect, while Baroque does. Expressionism throws some terrific ‘fuck yous’, Baroque doesn’t. Baroque is well-mannered.”[19]

Notable Expressionists

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Alvar CawénSokea soittoniekka (Blind Musician), 1922
Rolf NeschElbe Bridge I
Franz MarcDie großen blauen Pferde (The Large Blue Horses), 1911

Some of the style’s main visual artists of the early 20th century were:

Groups of painters

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In Germany and Austria

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Franz MarcRehe im Walde (Deer in Woods), 1914

The style originated principally in Germany and Austria. There were groups of expressionist painters, including Der Blaue Reiter and Die Brücke. Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider, named after a painting) was based in Munich and Die Brücke (The Bridge) was originally based in Dresden (some members moved to Berlin). Die Brücke was active for a longer period than Der Blaue Reiter, which was only together for a year (1912). The Expressionists were influenced by artists and sources including Edvard Munch, Vincent van Gogh and African art.[21] They were also aware of the work being done by the Fauves in Paris, who influenced Expressionism’s tendency toward arbitrary colours and jarring compositions. In reaction and opposition to French Impressionism, which emphasized the rendering of the visual appearance of objects, Expressionist artists sought to portray emotions and subjective interpretations. It was not important to reproduce an aesthetically pleasing impression of the artistic subject matter, they felt, but rather to represent vivid emotional reactions by powerful colours and dynamic compositions. Kandinsky, the main artist of Der Blaue Reiter, believed that with simple colours and shapes the spectator could perceive the moods and feelings in the paintings, a theory that encouraged him towards increased abstraction.[5]

The School of Paris

[edit]

In Paris a group of artists dubbed the École de Paris (School of Paris) by André Warnod were also known for their expressionist art.[22][23] This was especially prevalent amongst the foreign born Jewish painters of the School of Paris such as Chaim SoutineMarc ChagallYitzhak FrenkelAbraham Mintchine and others.[24][25][26] These artists’ expressionism was described as restless and emotional by Frenkel.[27] These artists, centered in the Montparnasse district of Paris tended to portray human subjects and humanity, evoking emotion through facial expression.[28] Others focused on the expression of mood rather than a formal structure.[29] The art of Jewish expressionists was characterized as dramatic and tragic, perhaps in connection to Jewish suffering following persecution and pogroms.[30]

In America

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The ideas of German expressionism influenced the work of American artist Marsden Hartley, who met Kandinsky in Germany in 1913.[31] In late 1939, at the beginning of World War IINew York City received many European artists. After the war, Expressionism influenced many young American artists. Norris Embry (1921–1981) studied with Oskar Kokoschka in 1947 and during the next 43 years produced a large body of work in the Expressionist tradition. Embry has been termed “the first American German Expressionist”. Other American artists of the late 20th and early 21st century have developed distinct styles that may be considered part of Expressionism. Another prominent artist who came from the German Expressionist “school” was Bremen-born Wolfgang Degenhardt. After working as a commercial artist in Bremen, he migrated to Australia in 1954 and became quite well known in the Hunter Valley region.

After World War II, figurative expressionism influenced artists and styles around the world. In the U.S., American Expressionism and American Figurative Expressionism, particularly Boston Expressionism, were an integral part of American modernism around the Second World War.[32][33] Thomas B. Hess wrote that “the ‘New figurative painting’ which some have been expecting as a reaction against Abstract Expressionism was implicit in it at the start, and is one of its most lineal continuities.”[34]

Representative paintings

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In other arts

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The Expressionist movement included other types of culture, including dance, sculpture, cinema and theatre.

Mary Wigman, pioneer of Expressionist dance (left) at her West Berlin studio in 1959

Dance

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Exponents of expressionist dance included Mary WigmanRudolf von Laban, and Pina Bausch.[45]

Sculpture

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Some sculptors used the Expressionist style, as for example Ernst Barlach. Other expressionist artists known mainly as painters, such as Erich Heckel, also worked with sculpture.[5]

Cinema

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There was an Expressionist style in German cinema, important examples of which are Robert Wiene‘s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Paul Wegener‘s The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920), Fritz Lang‘s Metropolis (1927) and F. W. Murnau‘s Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror (1922) and The Last Laugh (1924). The term “expressionist” is also sometimes used to refer to stylistic devices thought to resemble those of German Expressionism, such as film noir cinematography or the style of several of the films of Ingmar Bergman. More generally, the term expressionism can be used to describe cinematic styles of great artifice, such as the technicolor melodramas of Douglas Sirk or the sound and visual design of David Lynch‘s films.[46]

Literature

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Journals

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Two leading Expressionist journals published in Berlin were Der Sturm, published by Herwarth Walden starting in 1910,[47] and Die Aktion, which first appeared in 1911 and was edited by Franz PfemfertDer Sturm published poetry and prose from contributors such as Peter AltenbergMax BrodRichard DehmelAlfred DöblinAnatole FranceKnut Hamsun, Arno Holz, Karl KrausSelma LagerlöfAdolf LoosHeinrich MannPaul Scheerbart, and René Schickele, and writings, drawings, and prints by such artists as Kokoschka, Kandinsky, and members of Der blaue Reiter.[48]

Drama

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Oskar Kokoschka‘s 1909 playlet, Murderer, The Hope of Women is often termed the first expressionist drama. In it, an unnamed man and woman struggle for dominance. The man brands the woman; she stabs and imprisons him. He frees himself and she falls dead at his touch. As the play ends, he slaughters all around him (in the words of the text) “like mosquitoes.” The extreme simplification of characters to mythic types, choral effects, declamatory dialogue and heightened intensity all would become characteristic of later expressionist plays.[49] The German composer Paul Hindemith created an operatic version of this play, which premiered in 1921.[50]

Expressionism was a dominant influence on early 20th-century German theatre, of which Georg Kaiser and Ernst Toller were the most famous playwrights. Other notable Expressionist dramatists included Reinhard SorgeWalter HasencleverHans Henny Jahnn, and Arnolt Bronnen. Important precursors were the Swedish playwright August Strindberg and German actor and dramatist Frank Wedekind. During the 1920s, Expressionism enjoyed a brief period of influence in American theatre, including the early modernist plays by Eugene O’Neill (The Hairy ApeThe Emperor Jones and The Great God Brown), Sophie Treadwell (Machinal) and Elmer Rice (The Adding Machine).[51]

Expressionist plays often dramatise the spiritual awakening and sufferings of their protagonists. Some utilise an episodic dramatic structure and are known as Stationendramen (station plays), modeled on the presentation of the suffering and death of Jesus in the Stations of the Cross. Strindberg had pioneered this form with his autobiographical trilogy To Damascus. These plays also often dramatise the struggle against bourgeois values and established authority, frequently personified by the Father. In Sorge’s The Beggar, (Der Bettler), for example, the young hero’s mentally ill father raves about the prospect of mining the riches of Mars and is finally poisoned by his son. In Bronnen’s Parricide (Vatermord), the son stabs his tyrannical father to death, only to have to fend off the frenzied sexual overtures of his mother.[52]

In Expressionist drama, the speech may be either expansive and rhapsodic, or clipped and telegraphic. Director Leopold Jessner became famous for his expressionistic productions, often set on stark, steeply raked flights of stairs (having borrowed the idea from the Symbolist director and designer, Edward Gordon Craig). Staging was especially important in Expressionist drama, with directors forgoing the illusion of reality to block actors in as close to two-dimensional movement. Directors also made heavy use of lighting effects to create stark contrast and as another method to heavily emphasize emotion and convey the play or a scene’s message.[53]

German expressionist playwrights:

Playwrights influenced by Expressionism:

Poetry

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Among the poets associated with German Expressionism were:

Other poets influenced by expressionism:

Prose

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In prose, the early stories and novels of Alfred Döblin were influenced by Expressionism,[60] and Franz Kafka is sometimes labelled an Expressionist.[61] Some further writers and works that have been called Expressionist include:

Music

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The term expressionism “was probably first applied to music in 1918, especially to Schoenberg”, because like the painter Kandinsky he avoided “traditional forms of beauty” to convey powerful feelings in his music.[75] Arnold SchoenbergAnton Webern and Alban Berg, the members of the Second Viennese School, are important Expressionists (Schoenberg was also an expressionist painter).[76] Other composers that have been associated with expressionism are Krenek (the Second Symphony), Paul Hindemith (The Young Maiden), Igor Stravinsky (Japanese Songs), Alexander Scriabin (late piano sonatas) (Adorno 2009, 275). Another significant expressionist was Béla Bartók in early works, written in the second decade of the 20th century, such as Bluebeard’s Castle (1911),[77] The Wooden Prince (1917),[78] and The Miraculous Mandarin (1919).[79] Important precursors of expressionism are Richard Wagner (1813–1883), Gustav Mahler (1860–1911), and Richard Strauss (1864–1949).[80]

Theodor Adorno describes expressionism as concerned with the unconscious, and states that “the depiction of fear lies at the centre” of expressionist music, with dissonance predominating, so that the “harmonious, affirmative element of art is banished” (Adorno 2009, 275–76). Erwartung and Die Glückliche Hand, by Schoenberg, and Wozzeck, an opera by Alban Berg (based on the play Woyzeck by Georg Büchner), are examples of Expressionist works.[81] If one were to draw an analogy from paintings, one may describe the expressionist painting technique as the distortion of reality (mostly colors and shapes) to create a nightmarish effect for the particular painting as a whole. Expressionist music roughly does the same thing, where the dramatically increased dissonance creates, aurally, a nightmarish atmosphere.[82]

Architecture

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Einsteinturm in Potsdam

In architecture, two specific buildings are identified as Expressionist: Bruno Taut‘s Glass Pavilion of the Cologne Werkbund Exhibition (1914), and Erich Mendelsohn‘s Einstein Tower in Potsdam, Germany completed in 1921. The interior of Hans Poelzig‘s Berlin theatre (the Grosse Schauspielhaus), designed for the director Max Reinhardt, is also cited sometimes. The influential architectural critic and historian Sigfried Giedion, in his book Space, Time and Architecture (1941), dismissed Expressionist architecture as a part of the development of functionalism. In Mexico, in 1953, German émigré Mathias Goeritz published the Arquitectura Emocional (“Emotional Architecture”) manifesto with which he declared that “architecture’s principal function is emotion”.[83] Modern Mexican architect Luis Barragán adopted the term that influenced his work. The two of them collaborated in the project Torres de Satélite (1957–58) guided by Goeritz’s principles of Arquitectura Emocional.[84] It was only during the 1970s that Expressionism in architecture came to be re-evaluated more positively.[85][86]

See also

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References

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  1. Jump up to:a b Bruce Thompson, University of California, Santa Cruz, lecture on Weimar culture/Kafka’a Prague Archived 2010-01-11 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ Chris Baldick Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, entry for Expressionism
  3. Jump up to:a b Victorino Tejera, 1966, pages 85,140, Art and Human Intelligence, Vision Press Limited, London
  4. ^ The Oxford Illustrated Dictionary, 1976 edition, page 294
  5. Jump up to:a b c d e Gombrich, E.H. (1995). The Story of Art (16. ed. (rev., expanded and redesigned). ed.). London: Phaidon. pp. 563–568ISBN 978-0714832470.
  6. ^ Garzanti, Aldo (1974) [1972]. Enciclopedia Garzanti della letteratura (in Italian). Milan: Guido Villa. p. 963. page 241
  7. ^ John Willett, Expressionism. New York: World University Library, 1970, p.25; Richard Sheppard, “German Expressionism”, in Modernism: 1890–1930, ed. Bradbury & McFarlane, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976, p.274.
  8. ^ Cited in Donald E. Gordon, Expressionism: Art and Ideas. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987, p. 175.
  9. ^ R. S. Furness, Expressionism. London: Methuen, pp.2–14; Willett, pp. 20–24.
  10. ^ Richard Sheppard, p.274.
  11. ^ Note the parallel French movement Fauvism and the English Vorticism: “The Fauvist movement has been compared to German Expressionism, both projecting brilliant colors and spontaneous brushwork, and indebted to the same late nineteenth-century sources, especially Van Gogh.” Sabine Rewald, “Fauvism”, In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/fauv/hd_fauv.htm (October 2004); and “Vorticism can be thought of as English Expressionism.” Sherrill E. Grace, Regression and Apocalypse: Studies in North American Literary Expressionism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989, p. 26.
  12. ^ Sherrill E. Grace, Regression and Apacaypse: Studies in North American Literary Expressionism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989, p.26).
  13. ^ Richard Murphy, Theorizing the Avant-Garde: Modernism, Expressionism, and the Problem of Postmodernity. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,1999, p. 43.
  14. ^ Richard Murphy, p. 43.
  15. ^ Murphy, especially pp. 43–48; and Walter H. Sokel, The Writer in Extremis. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1959, especially Chapter One.
  16. ^ Britannica Online Encyclopaedia (February, 2012).
  17. ^ Ragon, Michel (1968). Expressionism. Heron. ISBN 9780900948640There is no doubt that Expressionism is Baroque in essence
  18. ^ Benjamin, Walter (1998). Origin of German Tragic Drama. London: Verso. ISBN 978-1-85984-899-9.
  19. ^ Pedullà, Gabriele; Arbasino, Alberto (2003). “Sull’albero di ciliegie – Conversando di letteratura e di cinema con Alberto Arbasino” [On the cherry tree – Conversations on literature and cinema with Alberto Arbasino]. CONTEMPORANEA Rivista di studi sulla letteratura e sulla comunicazioneL’espressionismo non rifugge dall’effetto violentemente sgradevole, mentre invece il barocco lo fa. L’espressionismo tira dei tremendi «vaffanculo», il barocco no. Il barocco è beneducato (Expressionism doesn’t shun the violently unpleasant effect, while Baroque does. Expressionism throws some terrific “Fuck yous”, Baroque doesn’t. Baroque is well-mannered.)
  20. ^ Ian Chilvers, The Oxford dictionary of art, Volume 2004, Oxford University Press, p. 506. ISBN 0-19-860476-9
  21. ^ Ian Buruma, “Desire in Berlin”, New York Review of Books, December 8, 2008, p. 19.
  22. ^ “The Jewish painters of l’École de Paris-from the Holocaust to today”Jews, Europe, the XXIst century. 2021-11-25. Retrieved 2023-11-19” l’École de Paris is a term coined by the art critic André Warnod in 1925, in the magazine Comœdia, to define the group formed by foreign painters in Paris. The École de Paris does not designate a movement or a school in the academic sense of the term, but a historical fact. In Warnod’s mind, this term was intended to counter a latent xenophobia rather than to establish a theoretical approach.
  23. ^ “Ecole de Paris: French Art School Led by Picasso”www.visual-arts-cork.com. Retrieved 2023-12-02.
  24. ^ Nieszawer, Nadine (2020). Histoire des Artistes Juifs de l’École de Paris: Stories of Jewish Artists of the School of Paris (in French). France. ISBN 979-8633355567.
  25. ^ “Alexandre FRENEL”Bureau d’art Ecole de Paris. 2019-01-02. Retrieved 2023-11-19.
  26. ^ “Marc CHAGALL”Bureau d’art Ecole de Paris. 2019-01-02. Retrieved 2023-11-19.
  27. ^ Barzel, Amnon (1974). Frenel Isaac Alexander. Israel: Masada. p. 14.
  28. ^ Lurie, Aya (2005). Treasured in the Heart: Haim Gliksberg’s Portraits. Tel Aviv. ISBN 978-9657161234.
  29. ^ Roditi, Eduard (1968). “The School of Paris”. European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe3(2), 13–20.
  30. ^ Ofrat, Gideon (2012). The Birth of Secular Art from the Zionist Spirit (in Hebrew). Jerusalem: Carmel. p. 234.
  31. ^ “Hartley, Marsden”, Oxford Art Online
  32. ^ Bram Dijkstra, American expressionism : art and social change, 1920–1950,(New York : H.N. Abrams, in association with the Columbus Museum of Art, 2003.) ISBN 0-8109-4231-3ISBN 978-0-8109-4231-8
  33. ^ Judith Bookbinder, Boston modern: figurative expressionism as alternative modernism (Durham, N.H. : University of New Hampshire Press; Hanover : University Press of New England, ©2005.) ISBN 1-58465-488-0ISBN 978-1-58465-488-9
  34. ^ Thomas B. Hess, “The Many Deaths of American Art,” Art News 59 (October 1960), p.25
  35. ^ Paul Schimmel and Judith E Stein, The Figurative fifties : New York figurative expressionism (Newport Beach, California : Newport Harbor Art Museum : New York : Rizzoli, 1988.) ISBN 978-0-8478-0942-4
  36. ^ “Editorial,” Reality, A Journal of Artists’ Opinions (Spring 1954), p. 2.
  37. ^ Flight lyric, Paris 1945–1956, texts Patrick-Gilles Persin, Michel and Pierre Descargues Ragon, Musée du Luxembourg, Paris and Skira, Milan, 2006, 280 p. ISBN 88-7624-679-7.
  38. ^ Caroline A. Jones, Bay Area figurative art, 1950–1965, (San Francisco, California : San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Berkeley : University of California Press, ©1990.) ISBN 978-0-520-06842-1
  39. ^ American Abstract and Figurative Expressionism: Style Is Timely Art Is Timeless (New York School Press, 2009.) ISBN 978-0-9677994-2-1 pp. 44–47; 56–59; 80–83; 112–115; 192–195; 212–215; 240–243; 248–251
  40. ^ Marika Herskovic, American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey, Archived 2007-09-29 at the Wayback Machine (New York School Press, 2000. ISBN 0-9677994-1-4. pp. 46–49; pp. 62–65; pp. 70–73; pp. 74–77; pp. 94–97; 262–264
  41. ^ American Abstract and Figurative Expressionism: Style Is Timely Art Is Timeless: An Illustrated Survey With Artists’ Statements, Artwork and Biographies(New York School Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-9677994-2-1. pp.24–27; pp.28–31; pp.32–35; pp. 60–63; pp.64–67; pp.72–75; pp.76–79; pp. 112–115; 128–131; 136–139; 140–143; 144–147; 148–151; 156–159; 160–163;
  42. ^ Ryan, David (2002). Talking painting: dialogues with twelve contemporary abstract painters, p.211, RoutledgeISBN 0-415-27629-2ISBN 978-0-415-27629-0. Available on Google Books.
  43. ^ “Exhibition archive: Expanding Boundaries: Lyrical Abstraction”Boca Raton Museum of Art, 2009. Retrieved 25 September 2009.
  44. ^ “John Seery”National Gallery of Australia. Retrieved 25 September 2009.
  45. ^ Walther, Suzanne (23 December 1997). The Dance Theatre of Kurt Jooss. Routledge. p. 23. ISBN 978-1-135-30564-2. Retrieved 29 May 2018.
  46. ^ Maria Pramaggiore; Tom Wallis (2005). Film: A Critical Introduction. Laurence King Publishing. pp. 88–90. ISBN 978-1-85669-442-1. Retrieved 29 May 2018.
  47. ^ “Der Sturm.”Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. 2012. Retrieved 21 January 2012.
  48. ^ Günter Berghaus (25 October 2012). International Futurism in Arts and Literature. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 285–286. ISBN 978-3-11-080422-5. Retrieved 29 May 2018.
  49. ^ David Graver (1995). The Aesthetics of Disturbance: Anti-art in Avant-garde Drama. University of Michigan Press. p. 65. ISBN 0-472-10507-8. Retrieved 29 May 2018.
  50. ^ John Lincoln Stewart (1991). Ernst Krenek: The Man and His Music. University of California Press. p. 82. ISBN 978-0-520-07014-1. Retrieved 29 May 2018.
  51. ^ Jonathan Law (28 October 2013). The Methuen Drama Dictionary of the Theatre. A&C Black. ISBN 978-1-4081-4591-3. Retrieved 29 May 2018.
  52. ^ J. L. Styan (9 June 1983). Modern Drama in Theory and Practice: Volume 3, Expressionism and Epic Theatre. Cambridge University Press. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-521-29630-4. Retrieved 29 May 2018.
  53. ^ Fulton, A. R. (1944). “Expressionism: Twenty Years After”. The Sewanee Review52 (3): 398–399. JSTOR 27537525.
  54. ^ Furness, pp.89–90.
  55. ^ Stokel, p.1.
  56. ^ Stokel, p.1; Lois Oppenheimer, The Painted Word: Samuel Beckett’s Dialogue with Art. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000, pp.74, 126–7, 128; Jessica Prinz, “Resonant Images: Beckett and German Expressionism”, in Samuel Beckett and the Arts: Music, Visual Arts, and Non-Print Media, ed. Lois Oppenheim. New York: Garland Publishing, 1999.
  57. ^ Ulf Zimmermann, “Expressionism and Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, in Passion and Rebellion
  58. ^ R. S. Furness, Expressionism. London: Methuen, 1973, p.81.
  59. ^ “Lyrisk ekspressionisme | lex.dk”. 29 January 2020.
  60. ^ Cowan, Michael (2007). “Die Tücke Des Körpers: Taming The Nervous Body In Alfred Döblin’s ‘Die Ermordung Einer Butterblume’ And ‘Die Tänzerin Und Der Leib'”. Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies43 (4): 482–498. doi:10.3138/seminar.43.4.482S2CID 197837029.
  61. ^ Walter H. Sokel, The Writer in Extremis. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1959, pp 3, 29, 84 especially; Richard Murphy, Theorizing the Avant-Garde. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,1999, especially pp 41,142.
  62. ^ Silvio Vietta, “Franz Kafka, Expressionism, and Reification” in Passion and Rebellion: The Expressionist Heritage, eds. Stephen Bronner and Douglas Kellner. New York: Universe Books, 1983 pp, pp.201–16.
  63. ^ Richard Murphy, Theorizing the Avant-Garde: Modernism, Expressionism and the Problem of Postmodernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp.74–141; Ulf Zimmermann, “Expressionism and Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz ” in Passion and Rebellion, pp.217–234.
  64. ^ Sheila Watson, Wyndham Lewis Expressionist. Ph.D Thesis, University of Toronto, 1965.
  65. ^ Sherrill E. Grace, Regression and Apocalypse: Studies in North American Literary Expressionism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989, pp.141–162.
  66. ^ Raymond S. Nelson, Hemingway, Expressionist Artist. Ames, Iowa University Press, 1979; Robert Paul Lamb, Art matters: Hemingway, Craft, and the Creation of the Modern Short Story. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, c.2010.
  67. ^ Walter H. Sokel, The Writer in Extremis. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1959, p.1; R. S. Furness, Expressionism. London: Methuen, 1973, p. 81.
  68. ^ Sherrill E. Grace, p.7.
  69. ^ Sherrill E. Grace, p.7
  70. ^ Sherrill E. Grace, pp 185–209.
  71. ^ Sherrill E. Grace, p.12.
  72. ^ Sherrill E. Grace, p.7, 241–3.
  73. ^ Jeffrey Stayton, “Southern Expressionism: Apocalyptic Hillscapes, Racial Panoramas, and Lustmord in William Faulkner’s Light in August”. The Southern Literary Journal, Volume 42, Number 1, Fall 2009, pp. 32–56.
  74. ^ Ken Worpole, Dockers and Detectives. London: Verso Editions, 1983, pp. 77–93.
  75. ^ The Norton Grove Concise Encyclopedia of Music, ed Stanley Sadie. New York: Norton1991, p. 244.
  76. ^ Theodor Adorno, Night Music: Essays on Music 1928–1962. (London: Seagull, 2009), p.274-8.
  77. ^ Nicole V. Gagné, Historical Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Classical Music (Plymouth, England: Scarecrow Press, 2011), p.92.
  78. ^ Andrew Clements, “Classical preview: The Wooden Prince”, The Guardian, 5 May 2007.
  79. ^ The Cambridge Companion to Bartók, ed. Amanda Bayley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p.152.
  80. ^ “Expressionism,” Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2000. “MSN Encarta : Online Encyclopedia, Dictionary, Atlas, and Homework”. Archived from the original on 2009-10-30. Retrieved 2012-06-29.; Donald Mitchell, Gustav Mahler: The Wunderhorn Years: Chronicles and Commentaries. Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2005
  81. ^ Edward Rothstein New York Times Review/Opera: “Wozzeck; The Lyric Dresses Up Berg’s 1925 Nightmare In a Modern Message”. New York Times February 3, 1994; Theodor Adorno, Night Music (2009), p.276.
  82. ^ Theodor Adorno, Night Music (2009), pp275-6.
  83. ^ Mathias Goeritz, “El manifiesto de arquitectura emocional”, in Lily Kassner, Mathias Goeritz, UNAM, 2007, p. 272-273
  84. ^ George F. Flaherty (16 August 2016). Hotel Mexico: Dwelling on the ’68 Movement. Univ of California Press. p. 93. ISBN 978-0-520-29107-2. Retrieved 29 May 2018.
  85. ^ Ben Farmer; Dr Hentie J Louw; Hentie Louw; Adrian Napper (2 September 2003). Companion to Contemporary Architectural Thought. Routledge. p. 359. ISBN 978-1-134-98381-0. Retrieved 29 May 2018.
  86. ^ Dennis Sharp (2002). Twentieth Century Architecture: A Visual History. Images Publishing. p. 297. ISBN 978-1-86470-085-5. Retrieved 29 May 2018.

Further reading

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Im Punemente

Im Punemente

 

Duele por dentro. La primera vez me despiertan con un estrepitoso golpe. La segunda vez siento la broca perforar desde adentro de mi caja torácica y veo al enrulado metal frenar sus vueltas. No ha tocado el pulmón. Salto de un solo golpe de la cama y corro con furia hacia la puerta blanca. Corro las cortinas a dos aguas como un loco desgárrandose la camisa de fuerza:

– ¡¿Quién es el desubicado?! – grité hacia el centro del edificio- ¡¿Quién osa perforarme así de impunemente?!

Todos los albañiles frenaron por unos dos segundos sus tironeos, turbulencias, raspones, fratachadas, mediciones, reconstrucciones, planificaciones y movimientos para mirarse entre sí, primero, y luego de mirarme por un segundo más volvieron velozmente a sus labores sin responderme. 

– ¡¿En dónde está el ingeniero?! – les grité a todos. 

– Está en el baño, Señor – dijo alguna voz. 

– ¡¿Pero es esto posible?! – le respondo dando un manotazo al aire. Hay disculpame querida, no era hacia tí.

Aprieto las tiras de mi robe de chambre de caña corta sobre mi cintura, me calzo las chancletas amarillas que suelo llevar al sauna y, reabsorbiendo la impunidad que me habrían tomado sin permiso mientras dormía (o lo intentaba) atiné a bajar por un andamio, pero como tus stilettos rojos se me incrustaban en los agujeros metálicos de la escalera resuelvo primero alzarte en brazos y, aún recibiendo azotes impredecibles de tu cabello azabache en la cara, mi amor, logro bajar al suelo inferior.

-¡¿Está acá el ingeniero?!” – les grito. 

Tres hombres serios se miran tensamente sobre una gran mesa de billar en una habitación con una sola lámpara de mesa siendo ahumada por el polvo de la des-cons-trucción. Un hombre saca el cigarro de su boca como quien manipula un habano o la mano de su hija pequeña y responde con una profunda voz:

– No, mire… el ingeniero no está, si no le molesta…” – y añade a su mano un movimiento en ademán de solicitar silencio y que me retire. A la vez extiende los dedos de la palma de la otra mano señalando los planos en el centro de la mesa. La vena se me hincha en el cuello.

– ¡Si, “papá”, claro que me molesta! Si usted no controla su obra, su tripartita obra, generandome una perdida, atravesada la vena, mírela!”. 

Le abro el robe de chambre de par en par y mientras mis pertenencias privadas cuelgan impunemente, les muestro un pecho peludo que escupe tinta azul por un orificio a la altura del corazón. Giro el pecho desde mi torso para ambos costados salpicando aquí y allá, allá y aquí, y así, rebotando la protuberancia al vaivén, continúo manchando la alfombra color billar con mi enorgullecida (/ renovada) impunidad. 

Adelanto un pie descalzo, piso un poco de la tinta con el mismo y agrego:

– Y lo digo así porque ella es toda mía. 

Un segundo hombre parado de espaldas sostiene un vaso de cognac como un pequeño lego en su gigante palma, de la cual extiende ambos dedos, el dedo índice y el gordo, y con éstos en busca de apuntar mi presencia gira sobre sus pies mientras acomoda la muñeca. 

– “Eso que tiene ahí, Señor, es un soplo al corazón”. 

El hombre yergue lentamente su pesado torso con un movimiento ondulante desde la cadera relocalizando de a una cada vértebra hasta acomodar los hombros en la posición en la que me encara desalmado por completo. 

– “Eso, Señor, se hereda”. 

A travéz de la puerta abierta puedo escuchar tus tacos caminando sobre el metal del andamio. Giro rápidamente cerrando mi rojo robe de chambre y corro pasando por la bruta puerta de madera. Llego en el momento justo a sostenerte en el aire justo antes de que pudieras dar el siguiente paso en falso. Contengo el aliento al escuchar el silencio de tus stilettos, no así el de la obra en con-des-trucción. Cargándote en brazos vuelvo en un giro a entrar en la oscura habitación billar del segundo piso. Corro tus cabellos azabache de entre mis dientes y peinándote prosigo: 

– “Lo que es herencia es lo que se está remodelando en este edificio, por lo que ningún detalle debería de pasárseles. ¡A ver! ¿En dónde está el especialista en Patrimonio Cultural?”. 

El hombre del cognac dirige el peso de su cuerpo hacia el muro de cuero verde. Una vez cerca de la pared la golpea rítmicamente con sus nudillos. Unos pasos se activan en el parlante derecho. La línea blanca en la nuca de una niña de cabello azabache que lleva un vestido de puntillas sentada frente a la pantalla negra cuadrada de 30 x 30 cm de un computador de los años 80 pivota hasta apuntar el parlante desde el cual proviene el sonido. El sonido pasa del parlante a la pantalla. La línea blanca sigue al sonido contra las agujas del reloj. El aparato se encuentra sobre una pequeña mesa modal de madera laminada instalada por su padre en el pequeño cuartito destinado para la computadora. Los pasos pasan al parlante izquierdo. La niña mira a la pared de madera detrás de la pantalla. Sigue con la intuición a aquellos pasos que se siguen moviendo aún más lejos, detrás de las paredes de esa pequeña habitación. Se sujeta con ambas manos a la silla. Eleva lentamente su cadera del asiento haciendo fuerza con los biceps contra el asiento. 

Los pasos suenan ahora detrás de mí, en donde la puerta abierta, y siento la presencia de un joven hombre detrás mío. Quizás es su olor, o su respirar, lo que sea es claramente su aire ¡Y qué aire! El joven pasa por mi costado rápidamente y se acerca al arquitecto. 

– ¿Me llama, Doctor?

– Si, mire, tenemos un hombre aquí que tiene un soplo al corazón.

– ¡Válgame! ¡Nunca había visto yo uno de esos! ¿Dónde? – responde interesado el joven de unos 40 años. 

– Detrás suyo, caballero – responde el arquitecto. 

El gran hombre extiende su brazo en mi dirección dejando colgar la mano lánguidamente hacia mi sospecha, pero esta vez, educadamente, no me señala. El joven se percata de mi presencia por vez primera. Pegándose un susto exclama: 

– “¡Oh! ¡Por María y el niño discúlpeme Señoro!” -se tapa los ojos y mira al suelo. 

Impaciente le pregunto: 

– ¿Pero por qué se oculta? Yo vengo a mostraros esto – le digo abriendo aún nuevamente mi  robe de chambre, girando mi pecho de lado a lado, con la cadera siempre en peso contrapuesto, haciendo vaivén a mis pertenencias que al golpear contra mis muslos hacen eco. La tinta azul sale expulsada a un lado y al otro, al otro y a un lado, empapando la alfombra. Freno, manteniéndome abierto. 

– Dígame, ¿Qué se hace con ésto? ¡Sucede que me taladraron desde adentro mientras dormía! – replico con una pisada fuerte sobre el charco azul. (retomando mi enojo )

El joven se agacha lentamente en pequeños pasos hacia mí. Con la palma abierta hacia el suelo hace círculos como si rastrease algún metal pesado. A veces no logro verle porque tus largos cabellos oscuros se me meten por los ojos y me pican la cara, la boca y la nariz. El joven llega al charco y roza con los dedos el felpudo verde billar. Lleva los dedos a la boca manchando su pera y la comisura de sus labios con un intenso color azul ultramar. Mirándome lo degusta y traga. Luego apoya la mano entera en el charco y presiona. Escurre la tinta entre sus dedos. Acaricia la alfombra como a la piel de una fiera herida. 

– Hmmm – gime. 

Te escucho responderle – “ij ij ijss” – Te escucho herida. 

– ¿Y? ¿Va a insistir en el dolor? – le exijo impacientemente – Y usted, al que le dicen Doctor ¿Qué va a decirme?

El arquitecto niega con la cabeza y mira al joven. El joven se levanta sobre sus pies. El arquitecto le sigue con la mirada. Repentinamente el ruido de la obra en cons-des-trucción se vuelve intenso. La puerta había quedado abierta. El joven se percata de su ensimismamiento y saliendo de sí mismo con el movimiento se dirige hacia la puerta para cerrarla. Queda solo un hilo de luz abrazando el filo de la puerta flotando sobre el perfil y difuminándose en puntos de polvo en el aire. El joven especialista en Preservación Cultural corta la línea de neón con la oscuridad de su mano, sujetada la única clarividencia el hilo de oro desaparece, la línea es ahora tan solo un raspón en la madera. 

– Creo que entiendo lo que le sucede. Mire, si fuera tan gentil de acompañarme, le mostraré una habitación que hemos terminado esta misma mañana, mientras dormía, especialmente para usted – me dice invitándome a cruzar la puerta con él. 

Cierro mi Robe de chambre con angustia ¿A dónde más va todo esto a parar? Pero debo admitir que me intriga cómo podrían haber hecho algo para mí sin ninguna opinión. Basta con felicitarles, esperar a que se vayan todos los albañiles, los arquitectos también y llamar a un decorador privado. Voy a ver de que se creen que son capaces. Tu cabello oscuro entre mis ojos otra vez. Miro al suelo, se te cayó un zapato, mi amor. Me agacho para agarrarlo. Al tocar el suelo, mi miembro se mancha de azul. La presión de mi cuerpo comprime la circulación del animal herido en el suelo. Brotes de azul ultramar se escurren entre los dedos de mis pies. Tomo tu zapato y vuelvo a pararme. El Robe de chambre ahora manchado en los bordes también.

¡Qué desperdicio tu zapato, mi vida! – pienso – El charol rojo manchado de vibrante azul ultramarino servirá desde ahora solamente para algún happening, o performance experimental,  un desperdicio… No… ¡No me malinterpretes cariño! Vos no sos experimentable – te susurro corriendo suavemente tus cabellos oscuros de entre mis ojos y dientes por milésima vez. 

Camino con mis piernas descubiertas. El joven sostiene la puerta como a la salida de una pirámide. Entre el aire de polvo, el cigarro y el tufo humano, seguramente hay por ahí algún sarcófago. Caminamos por una galería de techo alto con muros y barandas de piedra que rodea al pulmón del edificio. No se puede admirar todo, aún nada, tapado por andamios y por cuerpos vivientes que percursionan sus técnicas. Van a volverme loco. Le sigo. El joven dobla por un pasillo oscuro de piedra que se abre a la derecha y dobla nuevamente a la izquierda en donde enciende un candelabro de pared con el fuego de un encendedor que saca del bolsillo de su chaqueta ¡Válganme mil cielos esas llamas! Eso sí que lo apruebo. Es una ganancia definitivamente. 

– Dígame, Señor ¿Hace cuánto que lleva ese soplo al corazón?

– Desde esta mañana les he dicho ya – le respondo con behemencia.

– Bueno, entonces está listo – dice empujando con ambas manos una gran puerta de madera.

Sostiene la hoja izquierda de la entrada con un brazo, mientras con el otro me hace el ademán de invitarme a entrar a dicha habitación.

– ¿Desea pasar usted? – sugiere amablemente. Por alguna razón no puedo entrever el interior de la habitación, sino solo los dos escalones de mármol que debo subir para pasar por la puerta. 

Sin poder pensar cómo sucede me encuentro dentro de una habitación completamente blanca sin esquinas, realizada con el más puro marmol. La forma del recinto se asemeja a una horma de queso por dentro. Los círculos concéntricos de mármol señalan en el centro un tubo quirúrgico de metal que sostiene a un metro del suelo un pequeño recipiente de plata sobre el que reposa un tubo transparente de un plástico muy flexible. Me acerco. Noto que el joven no está en la habitación y que, además, ha cerrado la entrada. Tú te has quedado con él, seguramente le tocas las duras nalgas masculinas en la oscuridad de alguna esquina de la obra en con-des-trucción. Mis nalgas ya son viejas. 

La habitación no posee ventanas ni lámparas, pero su luz me encandila, no la comprendo. Me reclino frente al artefacto metálico. Tomo el tubo plástico y observo que lleva en su extremo una válvula. Tiro de él y lo sigo con la mirada hasta que, luego de unos tres metros, desaparece por un orificio especialmente diseñado en el suelo para él que posee un borde del mismo color metálico quirúrgico. En un impulso de inocencia, sin siquiera pensarlo dos veces, apunto la válvula hacia mí y con un preciso golpe clavo la válvula en mi carne, exactamente ahí por donde el coágulo azul oscuro. Contengo la respiración. El dolor es tan agudo que siento que me desmayo. Presiono fuertemente una vez más. Encuentro que sigo aún parado en medio de una extraña sensación de vergüenza. El tubo plástico se va llenando de azul. 

Siento mi desnudez, la protuberancia me golpea fría por la tinta cuando giro sobre mi eje con la intención en vano de llevar mi pierna izquierda un paso más allá de la más céntrica circunferencia de la habitación. Mi talón derecho resbala sobre el hilo azul que sin notarlo se escabulle por entre mis muslos. La rodilla pierde el balance de mi cadera y con ambos pies en el aire caigo de cola al suelo marcándolo y salpicándolo todo de azul. 

Toco rápidamente mi pecho. La válvula sigue bien enchufada. Exhalo profundamente.

– Cálmate, cálmate Luis – me calmo a mí mismo – Qué patético mi cuerpo setentoso, larguirucho y culo fruncido – pienso. 

Muevo mi trasero. Quiero visualizar la magnitud del desastre para estudiar cómo pararme de manera segura. Inmediatamente debajo de mi cuerpo encuentro que la marca que dibujaron mis piernas al esparcir bajo presión la tinta sobre la fría e intransigente superficie se mueve por sí misma penetrando el blanco mármol, marcándolo como a un condensado algodón. Toco la mancha debajo de mí, fría y seca por fuera, viva y moviéndose dentro del suelo. La proximidad de mi ser acentúa la oscuridad del color. La distancia de mi presencia al suelo blanco imprime sobre él como una pincelada sobre papel. 

Me muevo y genero una ondeada de acuarela azul. Me paro sobre mis pies con asombro. Miro a mi costado. Me acerco dubitativamente a una de las paredes, el tubo plástico flexible se extiende sin resistencia desde su orificio en el suelo. El muro toma un tenue color blancuzco pálido hacia donde intenciono dirigirme. En la medida en la que me acerco va tomando desaturados tonos de azules aguados que se van oscureciendo y saturando con cada paso de proximidad. Freno a un metro contemplando el manchón vivo y luminoso. Doy un pequeño paso al costado, las formas me siguen. Muevo mi brazo en forma de círculo paralelo al suelo. Una línea azul dibuja su trazo con su punto más vibrante en el centro, allí a donde más se acerca mi mano extendida hacia el muro. La risa se me estalla desde la válvula implantada, pasa por mi tráquea, encuentra salida por mi garganta y abrazándome, con las manos ensangrentadas de azul, permito al sonido salir por las dos comisuras de mis labios y entre los dientes. Río, río como un loco, cada vez más fuerte. Más fuerte. Salto y dibujo una mancha en el techo. Salto nuevamente y esta vez me dejo caer sobre la pared con el rostro pegado al charco vertical. Me empujo, río, marco azul a todos mis lados. Me siento vivo, desmesuradamente. 

Camino unos pasos hacia atrás para contemplar mis manchas. Tropiezo sin querer con el tubo plástico cargado de azul, pero no caigo al suelo esta vez. Retándome tontamente lo acomodo. Al mirar el suelo noto que mis antiguas pisadas ya no están allí, doy la vuelta y veo que el centro de la mancha en el techo parece ya casi de blanco. Encuentro cómo en el gran muro azul mis manchas se borran por sus extremos, como a cada lado tres metros, los bordes se difuminan. Una cosquilla de ansiedad recorre mi pierna. 

-¡No! ¡No! ¡No! ¡Yo sabía que lo diseñarían mal! ¡Yo debo ser inolvidable! ¡Yo debo ser! Los encontraré a los tres y ya verán ¡Ya verán!

Corro al centro del recinto donde la vara metálica sostiene al tubo flexible. Cerca de él tu zapato rojo manchado de azul genera una mancha de acuarela azul sobre el suelo. De un salto llego hasta él y lo levanto ¿Debo demostrarte cómo te has olvidado otra vez algo en mí, mi amor?

Tiro con fuerza del extremo del tubo clavado en el soplo al corazón. El metal suelta la carne. 

Tus cabellos oscuros se mezclan entre mis pestañas, picando mi nariz. El joven de 40 años en el pasillo sostiene con su brazo la puerta abierta hacia adentro. Invita a alguien que no veo a entrar. 

Expiro aliviado. Al inhalar noto que no respiro y entro en pánico. Del susto me tropiezo. Mientras caigo la habitación se vuelve aún más blanca, pierdo la noción de los bordes y del tiempo. Escucho dos pasos subir los escalones de mármol. El joven da un paso hacia atrás en la oscuridad. La imágen gira y se quema. Todo lo que veo por los ojos se devela, incluso tus cabellos, finas líneas que se esfuman picándome la nariz.

 

A Carlos Saura

Lunes 30 septiembre

 

Edouard Vuillard

Edouard Vuillard

Visito a una artista en Berlin que me muestra una de sus maximas referencias en pintura que es el pintor Edouard Vuillard. Me interesa su arte por mis estudios acerca del expresionismo, esta vez el Frances.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89douard_Vuillard

Jean-Édouard Vuillard (French: [ʒɑ̃ edwaʁ vɥijaʁ]; 11 November 1868 – 21 June 1940) was a French painter, decorative artist, and printmaker. From 1891 through 1900, Vuillard was a prominent member of the avant garde artistic group Les Nabis, creating paintings that assembled areas of pure color. His interior scenes, influenced by Japanese prints, explored the spatial effects of flattened planes of color, pattern, and form.[1] As a decorative artist, Vuillard painted theater sets, panels for interior decoration, and designed plates and stained glass. After 1900, when the Nabis broke up, Vuillard adopted a more realistic style, approaching landscapes and interiors with greater detail and vivid colors. In the 1920s and 1930s, he painted portraits of prominent figures in French industry and the arts in their familiar settings.

Vuillard was influenced by Paul Gauguin, among other post-impressionist painters.[2]

Nabis (art)

The first Nabis painting, by Paul SérusierLe Bois d’Amour à Pont-Aven or Le Talisman, 1888, oil on wood, 27 x 21.5 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris

The Nabis (Frenchles nabisFrench pronunciation: [lenabi]) were a group of young French artists active in Paris from 1888 until 1900, who played a large part in the transition from Impressionism and academic art to abstract artsymbolism and the other early movements of modernism. The members included Pierre BonnardMaurice DenisPaul RansonÉdouard VuillardKer-Xavier RousselFélix VallottonPaul Sérusier and Auguste Cazalis.[1] Most were students at the Académie Julian in Paris in the late 1880s. The artists shared a common admiration for Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne and a determination to renew the art of painting, but varied greatly in their individual styles. They believed that a work of art was not a depiction of nature, but a synthesis of metaphors and symbols created by the artist.[2] In 1900, the artists held their final exhibition and went their separate ways.[3]

https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.61388.html

Vuillard belonged to a quasi-mystical group of young artists that arose in about 1890 and called themselves the Nabi, a Hebrew word for prophet. The Nabi rejected impressionism and considered simple transcription of the appearance of the natural world unthinking and unartistic. Inspired by Gauguin’s work and symbolist poetry, their paintings evoke rather than specify, suggest rather than describe. Recognizing that the physical components of painting — colored pigments arranged on a flat surface — were artificial, they considered as false the traditional convention of regarding paintings as re-creations of the natural world.

Woman in a Striped Dress is one of five decorations Vuillard painted in 1895 for Thadée Natanson, publisher of the avant-garde journal La Revue Blanche, and his wife Misia Godebska, an accomplished pianist. The five, which differ in size and orientation, are intimate, self contained interiors, Vuillard’s principal subject. All display rich harmonies in a restricted range of color and densely arranged in intricate patterns. The introspective woman arranging flowers here perhaps represents the red-haired Misia, whom Vuillard admired greatly. Vuillard adopted the symbolist idea of synesthesia, whereby one sense can evoke another, and in Woman in a Striped Dress the sumptuous visual qualities of Vuillard’s reds may suggest the lush chords of music that Misia performed.

https://artvee.com/artist/edouard-vuillard/

Édouard Vuillard

French, 1868-1940

Jean-Édouard Vuillard was a French painter, decorative artist and printmaker. From 1891 through 1900, he was a prominent member of the Nabis, making paintings which assembled areas of pure color, and interior scenes, influenced by Japanese prints, where the subjects were blended into colors and patterns. He also was a decorative artist, painting theater sets, panels for interior decoration, and designing plates and stained glass. After 1900, when the Nabis broke up, he adopted a more realistic style, painting landscapes and interiors with lavish detail and vivid colors. In the 1920s and 1930s he painted portraits of prominent figures in French industry and the arts in their familiar settings.

Vuillard was influenced by Paul Gauguin, among other post-impressionist painters.

Jean-Édouard Vuillard was born on 11 November 1868 in Cuiseaux (Saône-et-Loire), where he spent his youth. Vuillard’s father was a retired captain of the naval infantry, who after leaving the military became a tax collector. His father was 27 years older than his mother, Marie Vuillard (née Michaud), who was a seamstress.

In 1877, after his father’s retirement, the family settled in Paris at 18 rue de Chabrol, then moved to Rue Daunou, in a building where his mother had a sewing workshop. Vuillard entered a school run by the Marist Brothers. He was awarded a scholarship to attend the prestigious Lycée Fontaine, which in 1883 became the Lycée Condorcet. Vuillard studied rhetoric and art, making drawings of works by Michelangelo and classical sculptures. At the Lycée he met several of the future Nabis, including Ker-Xavier Roussel (Vuillard’s future brother in law), Maurice Denis, writer Pierre Véber, and the future actor and theater director Aurélien Lugné-Poe.

In November 1885, when he left the Lycée, he gave up his original idea of following his father in a military career, and set out to become an artist. He joined Roussel at the studio of painter Diogène Maillart, in the former studio of Eugène Delacroix on Place Fürstenberg. There, Roussel and Vuillard learned the rudiments of painting. In 1885 he took courses at the Académie Julian, and frequented the studios of the prominent and fashionable painters William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Robert-Fleury. However, he failed in the competitions to enter the École des Beaux-Arts in February and July 1886 and again in February 1887. In July 1887, the persistent Vuillard was accepted, and was placed in the course of Robert-Fleury, then in 1888 with the academic history painter Jean-Léon Gérôme. In 1888 and 1889, he pursued his studies in academic art. He painted a self-portrait with his friend Waroquoy, and had a crayon portrait of his grandmother accepted for the Salon of 1889. At the end of that academic year, and after a brief period of military service, he set out to become an artist.

Late in 1889 he began to frequent the meetings the informal group of artists known as Les Nabis, or The prophets, a semi-secret, semi-mystical club which included Maurice Denis and some of his other friends from the Lycée. In 1888 the young painter Paul Sérusier had traveled to Brittany, where, under the direction of Paul Gauguin, he had made a nearly abstract painting of the seaport, composed of areas of color. This became The talisman, the first Nabi painting. Serusier and his friend Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis and Paul Ranson, were among the first Nabis of nabiim, dedicated to transforming art down to its foundations. In 1890, through Denis, Vuillard became a member of the group, which met in Ransom’s studio or in the cafes of the Passage Brady. The existence of the organization was in theory secret, and members used coded nicknames; Vuillard became the Nabi Zouave, because of his military service.

He first began working on theater decoration. He shared a studio at 28 Rue Pigalle with Bonnard with the theater impresario Lugné-Poe, and the theater critic Georges Rousel. He designed sets for several works by Maeterlinck and other symbolist writers. In 1891 he took part in his first exposition with the Nabis at the Chateau of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. He showed two paintings, including The Woman in a Striped Dress (see gallery below). The reviews were largely good, but the critic of Le Chat Noir wrote of “Works still indecisive, where one finds the features in style, literary shadows, sometimes a tender harmony.” (September 19, 1891).

Vuillard began keeping a journal during this time, which records the formation of his artistic philosophy. “We perceive nature through the senses which give us images of forms, sounds, colors, etc.” he wrote on 22 November 1888, shortly before he became a Nabi. “A form or a color exists only in relation to another. Form does not exist on its own. We can only conceive of the relations.” In 1890 he returned to the same idea: “Let’s look at a painting as a set of relations that are definitely detached from any idea of naturalism.”

The works of Vuillard and the Nabis were strongly influenced by Japanese woodblock prints, which were shown in Paris at the gallery of art dealer Siegfried Bing, and at a large show at the École des Beaux Arts in 1890. Vuillard himself acquired a personal collection of one hundred eighty prints, some of which are visible in the backgrounds of his paintings. The Japanese influence appeared particularly in his work in the negation of depth, the simplicity of forms, and strongly contrasting colors. The faces were often turned away, and drawn with just a few lines. There was no attempt to create perspective. Vegetal, floral and geometric designs in the wallpaper or clothing were more important than the faces. In some of Vuillard’s works, the persons in the paintings almost entirely disappeared into the designs of the wallpaper. The Japanese influence continued in his later, post-Nabi works, particularly in the painted screens depicting Place Vintimille he made for Marguerite Chaplin.

Another aspect of the Nabi philosophy shared by Vuillard was the idea that decorative art had equal value with traditional easel painting. Vuillard created theatrical sets and programs, decorative murals and painted screens, prints, designs for stained glass windows, and ceramic plates. In the early 1890s, he worked especially for the Théâtre de l’Œuvre of Lugné-Poe designing backdrops and programs.

From theater decoration, Vuillard soon moved into interior decoration. In the course of his theater work, met brothers Alexandre and Thadée Natanson, the founders of La Revue Blanche, a cultural review. Vuillardʹs graphics appeared in the journal, together with Pierre Bonnard, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Félix Vallotton and others. In 1892, on a commission Natanson brothers, Vuillard painted his first decorations (“apartment frescoes”) for the house of Mme Desmarais. He made others in 1894 for Alexandre Natanson, and in 1898 for Claude Anet.

He used some of the same techniques he had used in the theater for making scenery, such as peinture à la colle, or distemper, which allowed him to make large panels more quickly. This method, originally used in Renaissance frescos, involved using rabbit-skin glue as a binder mixed with chalk and white pigment to make gesso, a smooth coating applied to wood panels or canvas, on which the painting was made. This allowed the painter to achieve finer detail and color than on canvas, and was waterproof. In 1892 he received his first decorative commission to make six paintings to be placed above the doorways of the salon of the family of Paul Desmarais. He designed his panels and murals to fit into the architectural setting and the interests of the client.

In 1894, he and the other Nabis received a commission from art gallery owner Siegfried Bing, who had given Art Nouveau its name, to design stained glass windows to be made by the American firm of Louis Tiffany. Their designs were displayed in 1895 at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, but the actual windows were never made. In 1895 he designed a series of decorative porcelain plates, decorated with faces and figures of women in modern dress, immersed in floral designs. The plates, along with his design for the Tiffany window and the decorative panels made for the Natansons, were displayed at the opening of Bing’s gallery Maison de l’Art Nouveau in December 1895.

Some of his best-known works, including the Les Jardins Publiques (The Public Gardens) and Figures dans un Interieur (Figures in an Interior) were made for the Natanson brothers, whom he had known at the Lycée Condorcet, and for their friends. They gave Vuillard freedom to choose the subjects and style. Between 1892 and 1899, Vuillard made eight cycles of decorative paintings, with altogether some thirty panels. The murals, though rarely displayed during his lifetime, later became among his most famous works.

Public Gardens is a series of six panels illustrating children in the parks of Paris. The patrons, Alexander Natanson and his wife Olga, had three young daughters. The paintings show a variety of different inspirations, including the medieval tapestries at the Hotel de Cluny in Paris that Vuillard greatly appreciated. For this series Vuillard did not use oil paint, but peinture a la colle, a method he had used in painting theater sets, which required him to work very quickly, but allowed him to make modifications and to achieve the appearance of frescoes. He received the commission on 24 August 1894, and completed the series at the end of the same year. They were installed in the dining room/salon of the Natansons.

Vuillard frequently painted interior scenes, usually of women in a workplace, at home, or in a garden. The women’s faces and features are rarely the center of attention; the painting were dominated by the bold patterns of the costumes, the wallpaper, carpets, and furnishings.

He painted a series of paintings of seamstresses in the workshop of a dressmaker, based on the workshop of his mother. In La Robe à Ramages (The flowered dress; 1891), the women in the workshop are assembled out of areas of color. The faces, seen from the side, have no details. The patterns of their costumes and the decor dominate the pictures. The figures include his grandmother, to the left, and his sister Marie, in the bold patterned dress which is the central feature of the painting. He also placed a mirror on the wall to the left, scene, a device which allowed him to two points of view simultaneously and to reflect and distort the scene. The result is a work that is deliberately flattened and decorative.

The Seamstress with Chiffons (1893) also presents a seamstress at work, seated in front of a window. Her face is obscure and the image appears almost flat, dominated by the floral patterns of the wall.

In 1895 Vuillard received a commission from the cardiologist Henri Vaquez for four panels to decorate the library of his Paris house at 27 rue du Général Foy. The primary subjects were women engaged in playing the piano, sewing, and other solitary occupations in a highly decorated bourgeois apartment. The one man in the series, presumably Vaquez himself, is shown in his library reading, paying little attention to the woman sewing next to him. The tones are somber ochres and purples. The figures in the panels are almost entirely integrated the elaborate wallpaper, carpet, and patterns of the dresses of the women. Art critics immediately compared the works to medieval tapestries. The paintings, completed in 1896, were originally titled simply People in Interiors but later critics added subtitles: Music, Work, The Choice of Books, and Intimacy. They are now in the Museum of the Petit Palais in Paris.

In 1897 his interiors showed a noticeable change, with Large Interior with Six Persons. The picture was much more complex in its perspective, depth and color, with carpets arranged in different angles, and the figures scattered around the room more recognizable. It was also complex in its subject matter. The setting appears to be the apartment of the Nabi painter Paul Ranson, reading a book; Madame Vuillard seated in an armchair, Ida Rousseau coming in the door, and her daughter Germaine Rousseau, standing at the left. The unstated subject was the romantic affair between Ker-Xavier Roussel and Germaine Rousseau, his sister-in-law, which shocked the Nabis.

The Nabis went their separate ways after their exposition in 1900. They had always had different styles, though they shared common ideas and ideals about art. The separation was made deeper by the Dreyfus Affair (1894–1908), which split French society. Dreyfus was a Jewish French army officer accused falsely of treason, and sentenced to a penal colony, before finally being exonerated. Among the Nabis, Vuillard and Bonnard supported Dreyfus, while Maurice Denis and Sérusier supported the side of the French army.

After the separation of the Nabis in 1900, the style and subjects of Vuillard changed. He had formerly been, with the Nabis, in the vanguard of the avant-garde. Now he gradually abandoned the close, crowded and dark interiors he had painted before 1900, and began to paint more outdoors, with natural light. He continued to paint interiors, but the interiors had more light and color, more depth, and the faces and features were clearer. The effects of the light became primary components of his paintings, whether they were interior scenes or the parks and streets of Paris. He gradually returned to naturalism. He held his second large personal exhibition at the Gallerie Bernheim-Jeune in November 1908, where he presented many of his new landscapes. He was praised by one anti-modernist critic for “his delicious protest against systematic deformations.”

In 1912, Vuillard, Bonnard and Roussel were nominated for the Légion d’honneur, but all three refused the honor. “I do not seek any other compensation for my efforts than the esteem of people with taste,” he told a journalist.

In 1912, Vuillard painted Théodore Duret in his Study, a commissioned portrait that signaled a new phase in Vuillard’s work, which was dominated by portraiture from 1920 onwards.

Vuillard served as a juror with Florence Meyer Blumenthal in awarding the Prix Blumenthal, a grant given between 1919–1954 to young French painters, sculptors, decorators, engravers, writers, and musicians.

After 1900 Vuillard continued to paint numerous domestic interiors and gardens, but in a more naturalistic, colorful style than he had used as a Nabi. Though the faces of the persons were still often looking away, the interiors had depth, a richness of detail, and warmer colors. He particularly captured the play of the sunlight on the gardens and his subjects. He did not want to return to the past, but wanted to move into the future with a vision that was more decorative, naturalistic and familiar than that of the modernists.

He made new series of decorative panels, depicting urban scenes and parks in Paris, as well as many interior scenes of Paris shops and homes. He depicted the galleries of the Louvre Museum and the Museum of Decorative Arts, the chapel of the Palace of Versailles.

The theater was an important part of Vuillard’s life. He had begun as a Nabi by making sets and designing programs for an avant-garde theater, and throughout his life had close contacts with theater people. He was a friend of, and painted the actor and director Sacha Guitry. In May 1912, he received an important commission for seven panels, and three paintings above the doorways, for the new Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, including one of Guitry in his loge at the theater, and another of the comic playwright Georges Feydeau. He attended the performances of the Ballets Russes between 1911 and 1914, and dined with the Russian director of the Ballet, Sergei Diaghilev, and with the American dancer Isadora Duncan. and frequented the Follies Bergere and the Moulin Rouge in their heyday. In 1937 he and Bonnard received combined his impressions of the history of Paris theater world in a large mural, La Comédie, for the foyer of the new Théâtre national de Chaillot, built for the 1937 Paris International Exposition.

Following the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, Vuillard was briefly mobilized for military duty as a highway guard. He was soon released from this duty, and returned to painting. He visited the armaments factory of his patron, Thadée Natanson, near Lyon, and later made a series of three paintings of the factories at work. He served briefly, from 2 February to 22 February, as an official artist to the French armies in the region of the Vosges, making a series of pastels. These included a sympathetic sketch of a captured German prisoner being interrogated. In August 1917, back in Paris, he received a commission from the architect Francis Jourdain for a mural for a fashionable Paris café, Le Grand Teddy.

In 1921 he received an important commission for decorative panels for the art patron Camille Bauer, for his residence in Basel, Switzerland. Vuillard completed a series of four panels, plus two over-the-door paintings, which were finished by 1922. He passed his summers each year from 1917 to 1924 at Vaucresson, at a house he rented with his mother. He also made a series of landscape paintings of the area.

After 1920 he was increasingly occupied painting portraits for wealthy and distinguished Parisians. He preferred to use the a la collie sur toiel, or distemper technique, which allowed him to create more precise details and richer color effects. His subjects ranged from the actor and director Sacha Guitry to the fashion designer Jeanne Lanvin, Lanvin’s daughter, the Contesse Marie-Blanche de Polignac, the inventor and aviation pioneer Marcel Kapferer, and the actress Jane Renouardt. He usually presented his subjects in their studios or homes or backstage, with lavishly detailed backgrounds, wallpaper, furnishings and carpets. The backgrounds both created a mood, told a story, and served as a contrast to bring out the main figure.

Between 1930 and 1935 he divided his time between Paris and the Chateau de Clayes, owned by his friend Hessel. He did not receive any official recognition from the French state until July 1936, when he was commissioned to make a mural, La Comédie, depicting his impressions of the history of Paris theater world for the foyer of the new Théâtre national de Chaillot, built for the 1937 Paris International Exposition. In August of the same year, the City of Paris bought four of paintings, Anabatistes, and a collection of sketches. In 1937 he received another major commission, along with Maurice Denis and Roussel, for a monumental mural at the Palace of the League of Nations in Geneva.

In 1938, he received more official recognition. He was elected in February 1938 to the Académie des Beaux Arts, and in July 1938 the Musée des Arts Decoratifs presented a major retrospective of his paintings. Later in the year he traveled to Geneva to oversee the installation of his mural Peace, Protector of the Arts at the League of Nations Building.

In 1940, he completed his last two portraits. He suffered from pulmonary difficulties, and traveled to La Baule in Loire-Atlantique to restore his health. He died there on 21 June 1940, the same month that the French army was defeated by the Germans in the Battle of France.

Si lo que creas
No me conmueve
Será que aquello
En lo que crees
Faltas tú

M. Lopez

 

 

Idea: Si lo que creas no me conmueve es porque no te tiene a tí.

. Original

Si lo que creas
No me conmueve
Será que en aquello
En lo que crees
Faltas tú

. Edicion 1

Si lo que creas
No me conmueve
Sera que eso
En lo que crees
Faltas tú

. Edicion 2

Si lo que creas
No me conmueve
Será que aquello
En lo que crees
Faltas tú

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