Login
Login

Expressionism#In other arts

{{Short description|Modernist art movement}}

{{Distinguish|Abstract Expressionism|Expressivism}}

{{Infobox art movement|name=Expressionism|image=Edvard Munch, 1893, The Scream, oil, tempera and pastel on cardboard, 91 x 73 cm, National Gallery of Norway.jpg|caption=Edvard Munch, The Scream, {{circa}}1893, oil, tempera and pastel on cardboard, 91 × 73 cm, National Gallery of Norway, inspired 20th-century expressionists.|yearsactive=The years before WWI and the interwar years|country=Predominantly Germany|influences=|influenced=American Figurative Expressionism, generally, and Boston Expressionism, in particular|majorfigures=Artists loosely categorized within such groups as Die Brücke, Der Blaue Reiter; the Berlin Secession, the School of Paris and the Dresden Secession}}

File:Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - Czardas dancers - Google Art Project.jpg

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.Chris Baldick Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, entry for Expressionism Expressionist artists have sought to express the meaningVictorino Tejera, 1966, pages 85,140, Art and Human Intelligence, Vision Press Limited, London of emotional experience rather than physical reality.The Oxford Illustrated Dictionary, 1976 edition, page 294

Expressionism developed as an avant-garde style before the First World War. It remained popular during the Weimar Republic,Bruce Thompson, University of California, Santa Cruz, [http://media.ucsc.edu/classes/thompson/weimar.html lecture on Weimar culture/Kafka'a Prague] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100111221535/http://media.ucsc.edu/classes/thompson/weimar.html |date=2010-01-11 }} particularly in Berlin. The style extended to a wide range of the arts, including expressionist architecture, painting, literature, theatre, dance, film and music.{{cite book|last1=Gombrich|first1=E.H.|title=The Story of Art|date=1995|publisher=Phaidon|location=London|isbn=978-0714832470|pages=[https://archive.org/details/storyofart00gomb_0/page/563 563–568]|edition=16. ed. (rev., expanded and redesigned).|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/storyofart00gomb_0/page/563}} 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.{{cite book |title=Enciclopedia Garzanti della letteratura |last=Garzanti |first=Aldo |author-link=Aldo Garzanti |year=1974 |orig-year=1972 |publisher=Guido Villa |location=Milan |pages=963 |language=it|ref=garzanti}} page 241

File:El Greco View of Toledo.jpg View of Toledo, 1595/1610 is a Mannerist precursor of 20th-century expressionism.{{cite web|title=El Greco|url=http://www.artble.com/artists/el_greco|publisher=Artble|accessdate=7 February 2016|date=2016}}]]

Etymology and history

{{Multiple images

| align = left

| direction = vertical

| total_width =

| image1 = Kollwitz.jpg

| alt1 =

| caption1 = Käthe Kollwitz, Woman with Dead Child, 1903, etching, Museum of Modern Art

| image2 = Wassily Kandinsky, 1903, The Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter), oil on canvas, 52.1 x 54.6 cm, Stiftung Sammlung E.G. Bührle, Zurich.jpg

| caption2 = Wassily Kandinsky, Der Blaue Reiter, {{circa}}1903

| image3 = Egon Schiele - Eduard Kosmack - 4702 - Österreichische Galerie Belvedere.jpg

| caption3 = Egon Schiele, Portrait of Eduard Kosmack, {{circa}}1910, oil on canvas, 100 × 100 cm, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere

| image4 = Macke, August - Promenade - Google Art Project.jpg

| caption4 = August Macke, Promenade, 1913, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich

}}

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.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. 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."Cited in Donald E. Gordon, Expressionism: Art and Ideas. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987, p. 175.

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);R. S. Furness, Expressionism. London: Methuen, pp.2–14; Willett, pp. 20–24. and pioneering Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1856–1939).

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 Marc, Paul Klee, and August Macke. However, the term Expressionism did not firmly establish itself until 1913.Richard Sheppard, p.274. Though mainly a German artistic movement initiallyNote 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. 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 Futurism, Vorticism, Cubism, Surrealism and Dadaism."Sherrill E. Grace, Regression and Apacaypse: Studies in North American Literary Expressionism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989, p.26). Richard Murphy also comments, “the search for an all-inclusive definition is problematic to the extent that the most challenging expressionists such as Kafka, Gottfried Benn and Döblin were simultaneously the most vociferous 'anti-expressionists.'"Richard Murphy, Theorizing the Avant-Garde: Modernism, Expressionism, and the Problem of Postmodernity. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,1999, p. 43.

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."Richard Murphy, p. 43. More explicitly, that the expressionists rejected the ideology of realism.Murphy, especially pp. 43–48; and Walter H. Sokel, The Writer in Extremis. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1959, especially Chapter One.

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".Britannica Online Encyclopaedia (February, 2012). 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 Reformation, German 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|date=March 2024}}

Expressionism has been likened to Baroque by critics such as art historian Michel Ragon{{cite book |first=Michel |last=Ragon |date=1968 |url=https://archive.org/details/expressionism00rago |url-access=registration |title=Expressionism |publisher=Heron |isbn=9780900948640 |quote=There is no doubt that Expressionism is Baroque in essence}} and German philosopher Walter Benjamin.{{cite book |last=Benjamin |first=Walter |title=Origin of German Tragic Drama |url=https://archive.org/details/originofgermantr1998benj |url-access=registration |year=1998 |publisher=Verso |location=London |isbn=978-1-85984-899-9}} 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."{{cite journal |first1=Gabriele |last1=Pedullà |first2=Alberto |last2=Arbasino |author-link2=Alberto Arbasino |url=http://www.libraweb.net/articoli3.php?chiave=543&rivista=23&articolo=200302301011 |title=Sull'albero di ciliegie – Conversando di letteratura e di cinema con Alberto Arbasino |trans-title=On the cherry tree – Conversations on literature and cinema with Alberto Arbasino |journal=CONTEMPORANEA Rivista di studi sulla letteratura e sulla comunicazione |date=2003 |quote=L’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.)}}

Notable Expressionists

{{Multiple image

| align =

| direction = vertical

| total_width =

| image1 = Den blinde spelmannen x Alvar Cawén.jpg

| alt1 =

| caption1 = Alvar Cawén, Sokea soittoniekka (Blind Musician), 1922

| image2 = Rolf-Nesch-Bro-Over-Elben.jpg

| caption2 = Rolf Nesch, Elbe Bridge I, (1932)

| image3 = Large Blue Horses.jpg

| caption3 = Franz Marc, Die 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

=== In Germany and Austria ===

{{redirect|German Expressionism|the film genre|German expressionist cinema}}

File:Franz Marc 020.jpg, Rehe im Walde (Deer in Woods), 1914|left]]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.Ian Buruma, "Desire in Berlin", New York Review of Books, December 8, 2008, p. 19. 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.

= The School of Paris =

{{Main article|School of Paris}}

In Paris a group of artists dubbed the École de Paris (School of Paris) by André Warnod were also known for their expressionist art.{{Cite web |date=2021-11-25 |title=The Jewish painters of l'École de Paris-from the Holocaust to today |url=https://k-larevue.com/en/the-jewish-painters-of-lecole-de-paris-from-the-holocaust-to-today/ |access-date=2023-11-19 |website=Jews, Europe, the XXIst century |language=en-US |quote=“ 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.}}{{Cite web |title=Ecole de Paris: French Art School Led by Picasso |url=http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of-art/ecole-de-paris.htm |access-date=2023-12-02 |website=www.visual-arts-cork.com}} This was especially prevalent amongst the foreign born Jewish painters of the School of Paris such as Chaim Soutine, Marc Chagall, Yitzhak Frenkel, Abraham Mintchine and others.{{Cite book |last=Nieszawer |first=Nadine |title=Histoire des Artistes Juifs de l'École de Paris: Stories of Jewish Artists of the School of Paris |year=2020 |isbn=979-8633355567 |publisher=Les Étoiles Éditions |location=France |language=French}}{{Cite web |date=2019-01-02 |title=Alexandre FRENEL |url=https://ecoledeparis.org/alexandre-frenel/ |access-date=2023-11-19 |website=Bureau d’art Ecole de Paris |language=en-US}}{{Cite web |date=2019-01-02 |title=Marc CHAGALL |url=https://ecoledeparis.org/marc-chagall/ |access-date=2023-11-19 |website=Bureau d’art Ecole de Paris |language=en-US}} These artists' expressionism was described as restless and emotional by Frenkel.{{Cite book |last=Barzel |first=Amnon |title=Frenel Isaac Alexander |publisher=Masada |year=1974 |location=Israel |pages=14 |language=English}} These artists, centered in the Montparnasse district of Paris tended to portray human subjects and humanity, evoking emotion through facial expression.{{Cite book |last=Lurie |first=Aya |title=Treasured in the Heart: Haim Gliksberg's Portraits |year=2005 |isbn=978-9657161234 |publisher=מוזיאון תל־אביב לאמנות |location=Tel Aviv}} Others focused on the expression of mood rather than a formal structure.Roditi, Eduard (1968). "The School of Paris". European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe, 3(2), 13–20. The art of Jewish expressionists was characterized as dramatic and tragic, perhaps in connection to Jewish suffering following persecution and pogroms.{{Cite book |last=Ofrat |first=Gideon |title=The Birth of Secular Art from the Zionist Spirit |publisher=Carmel |year=2012 |location=Jerusalem |pages=234 |language=he}}

= In the United States =

The ideas of German expressionism influenced the work of American artist Marsden Hartley, who met Kandinsky in Germany in 1913."Hartley, Marsden", Oxford Art Online In late 1939, at the beginning of World War II, New 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.

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.Bram Dijkstra, [http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/50866889&referer=brief_results American expressionism : art and social change, 1920–1950,](New York : H.N. Abrams, in association with the Columbus Museum of Art, 2003.) {{ISBN|0-8109-4231-3}}, {{ISBN|978-0-8109-4231-8}}Judith Bookbinder, [http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/57652272&referer=brief_results Boston modern: figurative expressionism as alternative modernism] (Durham, N.H. : University of New Hampshire Press; Hanover : University Press of New England, ©2005.) {{ISBN|1-58465-488-0}}, {{ISBN|978-1-58465-488-9}} 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."Thomas B. Hess, “The Many Deaths of American Art,” Art News 59 (October 1960), p.25

{{ISBN|0-415-27629-2}}, {{ISBN|978-0-415-27629-0}}. Available on [https://books.google.com/books?id=x7EaHuAfNtwC&dq=%22lyrical+abstraction%22+expressionist&pg=PA211 Google Books].[http://www.bocamuseum.org/index.php?src=gendocs&ref=ExhibitionArchive&category=Exhibitions "Exhibition archive: Expanding Boundaries: Lyrical Abstraction"], Boca Raton Museum of Art, 2009. Retrieved 25 September 2009.[http://www.nga.gov.au/International/Catalogue/Detail.cfm?IRN=36016 "John Seery"], National Gallery of Australia. Retrieved 25 September 2009.

  • Neo-expressionism was an international revival style that began in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Representative paintings

File:Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - Nollendorfplatz.jpg|Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Nollendorfplatz, 1912

File:August Macke 005.jpg|August Macke, Lady in a Green Jacket, 1913

File:Fighting Forms.jpg|Franz Marc, Fighting Forms, 1914

File:Kirchner - Selbstbildnis als Soldat.jpg|Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Self-Portrait as a Soldier, 1915

File:Chaïm Soutine - Vue de Céret.jpg|Chaïm Soutine - Vue de Céret 1922

File:Abraham Mintchine - Pierrot 1928.jpg|Abraham Mintchine - Pierrot 1928

File:Carcass of Beef by Chaim Soutine, c. 1925, Albright-Knox Art Gallery.jpg|Chaim Soutine - Carcass of Beef c. 1925

In other arts

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

File:Bundesarchiv B 145 Bild-P047336, Berlin, Mary Wigman-Studio.jpg, pioneer of Expressionist dance (left) at her West Berlin studio in 1959|left]]

=Dance=

{{Main|Expressionist dance}}

Exponents of expressionist dance included Mary Wigman, Rudolf von Laban, and Pina Bausch.{{cite book|last=Walther|first=Suzanne|title=The Dance Theatre of Kurt Jooss|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-EqPAgAAQBAJ|access-date=29 May 2018|date=23 December 1997|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-135-30564-2|page=23}}

=Sculpture=

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.

=Cinema=

{{Main|German Expressionism (cinema)}}

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.{{cite book|author1=Maria Pramaggiore|author2=Tom Wallis|title=Film: A Critical Introduction|url=https://archive.org/details/filmcriticalintr0000pram|url-access=registration|access-date=29 May 2018|year=2005|publisher=Laurence King Publishing|isbn=978-1-85669-442-1|pages=[https://archive.org/details/filmcriticalintr0000pram/page/88 88]–90}}

=Literature=

==Journals==

Two leading Expressionist journals published in Berlin were Der Sturm, published by Herwarth Walden starting in 1910,{{cite encyclopedia|title=Der Sturm.|url=https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/570146/Der-Sturm|encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica Online|publisher=Encyclopædia Britannica Inc.|access-date=21 January 2012|year=2012}} and Die Aktion, which first appeared in 1911 and was edited by Franz Pfemfert. Der Sturm published poetry and prose from contributors such as Peter Altenberg, Max Brod, Richard Dehmel, Alfred Döblin, Anatole France, Knut Hamsun, Arno Holz, Karl Kraus, Selma Lagerlöf, Adolf Loos, Heinrich Mann, Paul Scheerbart, and René Schickele, and writings, drawings, and prints by such artists as Kokoschka, Kandinsky, and members of Der blaue Reiter.{{cite book|author=Günter Berghaus|title=International Futurism in Arts and Literature|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LcshAAAAQBAJ|access-date=29 May 2018|date=25 October 2012|publisher=Walter de Gruyter|isbn=978-3-11-080422-5|pages=285–286}}

==Drama==

{{Main|Expressionism (theatre)}}

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.{{cite book|author=David Graver|title=The Aesthetics of Disturbance: Anti-art in Avant-garde Drama|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ub69UFnyuSwC|access-date=29 May 2018|year=1995|publisher=University of Michigan Press|isbn=0-472-10507-8|page=65}} The German composer Paul Hindemith created an operatic version of this play, which premiered in 1921.{{cite book|author=John Lincoln Stewart|title=Ernst Krenek: The Man and His Music|url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_-5RqK8C__ysC|access-date=29 May 2018|year=1991|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-07014-1|page=82}}

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 Sorge, Walter Hasenclever, Hans 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 Ape, The Emperor Jones and The Great God Brown), Sophie Treadwell (Machinal) and Elmer Rice (The Adding Machine).{{cite book|author=Jonathan Law|title=The Methuen Drama Dictionary of the Theatre|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oXMsAQAAQBAJ|access-date=29 May 2018|date=28 October 2013|publisher=A&C Black|isbn=978-1-4081-4591-3}}

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.{{cite book|author=J. L. Styan|title=Modern Drama in Theory and Practice: Volume 3, Expressionism and Epic Theatre|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sBSKmRjbbU4C|access-date=29 May 2018|date=9 June 1983|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-29630-4|page=4}}

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.{{Cite journal|last=Fulton|first=A. R.|date=1944|title=Expressionism: Twenty Years After|jstor=27537525|journal=The Sewanee Review|volume=52|issue=3|pages=398–399}}

German expressionist playwrights:

Playwrights influenced by Expressionism:

  • Seán O'Casey (1880–1964)Furness, pp.89–90.
  • Eugene O'Neill (1885–1953)
  • Elmer Rice (1892–1967)
  • Tennessee Williams (1911–1983)Stokel, p.1.
  • Arthur Miller (1915–2005)
  • Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)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.

==Poetry==

Among the poets associated with German Expressionism were:

Other poets influenced by expressionism:

==Prose==

In prose, the early stories and novels of Alfred Döblin were influenced by Expressionism,{{cite journal|last=Cowan|first=Michael|title=Die Tücke Des Körpers: Taming The Nervous Body In Alfred Döblin's 'Die Ermordung Einer Butterblume' And 'Die Tänzerin Und Der Leib'.|journal=Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies|year=2007|volume=43|issue=4|pages=482–498|doi=10.3138/seminar.43.4.482|s2cid=197837029 }} and Franz Kafka is sometimes labelled an Expressionist.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.

Some further writers and works that have been called Expressionist include:

  • Franz Kafka (1883–1924): "The Metamorphosis" (1915), The Trial (1925), The Castle (1926)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.
  • Alfred Döblin (1878–1957): Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929)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.
  • Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)Sheila Watson, Wyndham Lewis Expressionist. Ph.D Thesis, University of Toronto, 1965.
  • Djuna Barnes (1892–1982): Nightwood (1936)Sherrill E. Grace, Regression and Apocalypse: Studies in North American Literary Expressionism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989, pp.141–162.
  • Malcolm Lowry (1909–1957): Under the Volcano (1947)
  • Ernest HemingwayRaymond 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.
  • James Joyce (1882–1941): "The Nighttown" section of Ulysses (1922)Walter H. Sokel, The Writer in Extremis. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1959, p.1; R. S. Furness, Expressionism. London: Methuen, 1973, p. 81.
  • Patrick White (1912–1990)Sherrill E. Grace, p.7.
  • D. H. LawrenceSherrill E. Grace, p.7
  • Sheila Watson: Double HookSherrill E. Grace, pp 185–209.
  • Elias Canetti: Auto-da-FéSherrill E. Grace, p.12.
  • Thomas PynchonSherrill E. Grace, p.7, 241–3.
  • William FaulknerJeffrey 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.
  • James Hanley (1897–1985)Ken Worpole, Dockers and Detectives. London: Verso Editions, 1983, pp. 77–93.
  • Raul Brandão (1867–1930): Húmus (1917)
  • Leonid Andreyev (1871–1919): Devil's Diary (1919)

=Music=

{{Main|Expressionism (music)}}

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.The Norton Grove Concise Encyclopedia of Music, ed Stanley Sadie. New York: Norton1991, p. 244. Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern and Alban Berg, the members of the Second Viennese School, are important Expressionists (Schoenberg was also an expressionist painter).Theodor Adorno, Night Music: Essays on Music 1928–1962. (London: Seagull, 2009), p.274-8. 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),Nicole V. Gagné, Historical Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Classical Music (Plymouth, England: Scarecrow Press, 2011), p.92. The Wooden Prince (1917),Andrew Clements, "Classical preview: The Wooden Prince", The Guardian, 5 May 2007. and The Miraculous Mandarin (1919).The Cambridge Companion to Bartók, ed. Amanda Bayley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p.152. Important precursors of expressionism are Richard Wagner (1813–1883), Gustav Mahler (1860–1911), and Richard Strauss (1864–1949)."Expressionism," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2000. {{cite web |url=http://encarta.msn.com |title=MSN Encarta : Online Encyclopedia, Dictionary, Atlas, and Homework |access-date=2012-06-29 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091030221948/http://encarta.msn.com/ |archive-date=2009-10-30}}; Donald Mitchell, Gustav Mahler: The Wunderhorn Years: Chronicles and Commentaries. Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2005

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.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. 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.Theodor Adorno, Night Music (2009), pp275-6.

=Architecture=

{{Main|Expressionist architecture}}

File:Potsdam Telegrafenberg asv2023-09 img4.jpg 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".Mathias Goeritz, "El manifiesto de arquitectura emocional", in Lily Kassner, Mathias Goeritz, UNAM, 2007, p. 272-273 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.{{cite book|author=George F. Flaherty|title=Hotel Mexico: Dwelling on the '68 Movement|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=K6swDwAAQBAJ|access-date=29 May 2018|date=16 August 2016|publisher=Univ of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-29107-2|page=93}} It was only during the 1970s that Expressionism in architecture came to be re-evaluated more positively.{{cite book|author1=Ben Farmer |author2= Dr Hentie J Louw |author3= Hentie Louw |author4= Adrian Napper |title= Companion to Contemporary Architectural Thought |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=4eCvXjPi49kC|access-date=29 May 2018|date=2 September 2003|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-134-98381-0|page=359}}{{cite book|author=Dennis Sharp |title= Twentieth Century Architecture: A Visual History |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=mklcuKnGjr4C |access-date= 29 May 2018 |year= 2002 |publisher= Images Publishing |isbn= 978-1-86470-085-5|page=297}}

See also

References

{{Reflist|30em}}

Further reading

  • Antonín Matějček cited in Gordon, Donald E. (1987). Expressionism: Art and Idea, p. 175. New Haven: Yale University Press. {{ISBN|9780300033106}}
  • Frank Krause (ed.), Expressionism and Gender / Expressionismus und Geschlecht. Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2010, ISBN 3899717171
  • Jonah F. Mitchell (Berlin, 2003). Doctoral thesis Expressionism between Western modernism and Teutonic Sonderweg. Courtesy of the author.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche (1872). The Birth of Tragedy Out of The Spirit of Music. Trans. Clifton P. Fadiman. New York: Dover, 1995. {{ISBN|0-486-28515-4}}.
  • Judith Bookbinder, [http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/57652272&referer=brief_results Boston modern: figurative expressionism as alternative modernism,] (Durham, N.H.: University of New Hampshire Press; Hanover: University Press of New England, ©2005.) {{ISBN|1-58465-488-0}}, {{ISBN|978-1-58465-488-9}}
  • Bram Dijkstra, [http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/50866889&referer=brief_results American expressionism: art and social change, 1920–1950,] (New York: H.N. Abrams, in association with the Columbus Museum of Art, 2003.) {{ISBN|0-8109-4231-3}}, {{ISBN|978-0-8109-4231-8}}
  • Ditmar Elger Expressionism-A Revolution in German Art {{ISBN|978-3-8228-3194-6}}
  • Paul Schimmel and Judith E Stein, [http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/oclc/59997649&referer=brief_results The Figurative fifties: New York figurative expressionism, The Other Tradition] (Newport Beach, California: Newport Harbor Art Museum: New York: Rizzoli, 1988.) {{ISBN|978-0-8478-0942-4}} {{ISBN|978-0-91749312-6}}
  • Marika Herskovic, [http://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=worldcat_org_bks&q=9780967799421&fq=dt%3Abks American Abstract and Figurative Expressionism: Style Is Timely Art Is Timeless] (New York School Press, 2009.) {{ISBN|978-0-9677994-2-1}}.
  • [https://web.archive.org/web/20111216045054/http://www.uad.ro/storage/Dataitems/rezumat%20Thesis%20summary%20LAKATOS%20GABRIELA%20LUCIANA%20-engleza.pdf Lakatos Gabriela Luciana, Expressionism Today, University of Art and Design Cluj Napoca, 2011]

External links

{{Commons category|Expressionism}}

{{Wiktionary|expressionism}}

{{Wikiquote|Expressionism}}

  • [http://www.signandsight.com/features/216.html Hottentots in tails] – a turbulent history of the group by Christian Saehrendt at signandsight.com
  • [https://web.archive.org/web/20060220074525/http://www.hpic.net/galerie/galerie.htm German Expressionism] – a free resource with paintings from German expressionists (high-quality) (archived 20 February 2006)

{{clear}}{{Expressionism}}{{Post-Impressionism}}

{{Avant-garde}}

{{modernism}}

{{Westernart}}

{{Authority control}}

Category:German literary movements