{"id":510,"date":"2014-08-16T21:40:42","date_gmt":"2014-08-17T04:40:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/?p=510"},"modified":"2014-08-17T06:11:30","modified_gmt":"2014-08-17T13:11:30","slug":"thats-not-expressionism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/?p=510","title":{"rendered":"That’s Not Expressionism"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I went this week for the second time to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) to see the\u00a0big new exhibition entitled From Van Gogh to Kandinsky: Expressionism in Germany and France<\/em><\/a>. I had high hopes for this show. Thanks to the Robert Gore Rifkind collection at LACMA<\/a> and the Galka Scheyer collection at the Norton Simon Museum<\/a>, Los Angeles can boast the best collection of Expressionist artwork anywhere outside Germany and Austria. A blockbuster international show highlighting the Expressionists would be a welcome antidote to the steady stream of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist exhibits\u00a0at LACMA and most other American museums.<\/p>\n

The show presents a vast array of works by artists associated with the two German Expressionist groups\u00a0Die Br\u00fccke <\/em>(The Bridge) and\u00a0Der Blaue Reiter\u00a0<\/em>(The Blue Rider).\u00a0The main argument of the show is that these artists from Germany — Kirchner, Heckel, Nolde, Pechstein, Kandinsky, Marc, Macke, Jawlensky, Schmidt-Rottluff and Feininger — were influenced by the artists in France — Van Gogh, Matisse, Gaugin, Derain, Dufy, Picasso, Rousseau, Signac, Braque, and C\u00e9zanne. Indeed, the wall panel introduction asserts the “conversation” between Germany and France was the “most significant” influence on the Expressionists.<\/address>\n
While the artworks presented certainly demonstrate that the German artists imitated the Post-Impressionists and Fauves early in their careers, what is almost entirely missing from the show are any actual works that one might call Expressionist. By focusing on only the color palette, and not the actual content of the works, the curators have entirely missed the point of what Expressionism was\u00a0supposed to be.<\/address>\n
Expressionism was not necessarily a new direction in art. \u00a0There were many precursors, including, for example, Gr\u00fcnewald, Goya,\u00a0Turner and Munch, artists whose focus was on the expression of deep, often dark, mysterious emotions. The major French schools — Impressionists,\u00a0Post-Impressionists, Fauves, and Cubists — studiously avoided this type of heart-on-your-sleeve emotionality. \u00a0 Perhaps the distinction is best explained, not by words, but by pictures.<\/address>\n
Here are three works from 1910 by\u00a0the Austrian Expressionists — Kokoschka, Schiele, and Schoenberg — all of whom were consciously excluded from this show. \u00a0<\/address>\n
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These are all undoubtedly works that one would label Expressionist. \u00a0Now, what do they have in common with C\u00e9zanne’s Still Life with Apples (1893-94)<\/em>?<\/p>\n

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What about Gaugin’s\u00a0Polynesian Woman with Children (1901)?<\/em><\/p>\n

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And can you see a connection with Van Gogh’s\u00a0Restaurant of the Siren at Asni\u00e8res?<\/em><\/p>\n

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Ok, last one. \u00a0Can you see the influence on the Austrian Expressionists in Matisse’s\u00a0Still Life with Red Rug (1906)?<\/em><\/p>\n

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The answer is: you can’t. \u00a0Of course, if you are trying to make the case that the German Expressionists were mainly influenced by the French, then you have to choose only their works that show that influence, which is what the curators of the show do. \u00a0Over and over again, the curators take works that are obviously imitations of the French, rather than the later works that we all have come to know as Expressionism. \u00a0The few exceptions in the show stand out like sore thumbs.<\/p>\n

So, it is true that Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s 1909 Dodo at the Table<\/em> really does look like a Matisse.<\/p>\n

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But his\u00a0Street Scene\u00a0<\/em>from 1913 really does not.<\/p>\n

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Wassily Kandinsky’s\u00a0Arabian Cemetery (1909)<\/em> really does almost look like a Fauve work by Andr\u00e9 Derain.<\/p>\n

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But his\u00a0Sketch I for Painting with White Border (1913)<\/em> really does not.<\/p>\n

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What is missing from this show is anything that shows what German Expressionism really was. \u00a0Fortunately, you can walk over to the Ahmanson Building at LACMA and see highlights from the Rifkind collection, including this 1919 Expressionist masterpiece by Otto Dix.<\/p>\n

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But you won’t find anything like it in the blockbuster Expressionism show.<\/p>\n

The truth is that German Expressionism was not chiefly an outgrowth from French art trends. No doubt the Dutch (living in France) were a great influence. \u00a0The examples from Van Gogh and Van Dongen in the show really are terrific and certainly do point the way to Expressionism. But Expressionism as a movement was not really about the imitation or appropriation of the French color palette. It was the idea, not the style, that made Expressionism.<\/p>\n

In sum, the Post-Impressionists made great innovations in style (palette and technique), which the artists in Germany who later became Expressionists all tried early in their careers to imitate and adopt. But the bottom line is that Post-Impressionist painters for the most part were still painting\u00a0pretty pictures of pleasant scenes<\/strong>. \u00a0The Expressionists, when they finally hit their stride, were emphatically doing something completely different. The LACMA\u00a0show is just an excuse to once again put together a blockbuster Post-Impressionist show (Van Gogh, Matisse, Cezanne, Gaugin, etc) with some derivative early works by the Die Br\u00fccke<\/em> and Blaue Reiter<\/em> artists. We’ll have to wait for a truly great show on Expressionism, one that does not limit its focus to just the German artists, but includes the Austrians too. Because you cannot explain works like Kokoschka’s 1913-14\u00a0Bride of the Wind<\/em> by looking to France.<\/p>\n

\"'Bride_of_the_Wind',_oil_on_canvas_painting_by_Oskar_Kokoschka,_a_self-portrait_expressing_his_unrequited_love_for_Alma_Mahler_(widow_of_composer_Gustav_Mahler),_1913\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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I went this week for the second time to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) to see the\u00a0big new exhibition entitled From Van Gogh to Kandinsky: Expressionism in Germany and France. I had high hopes for this show. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=510"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":539,"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510\/revisions\/539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}