'New Expression in Germany and Austria'
In the years before World war l, artists in germany and Austria developed a provocative new approach based on high pitched color and jarring distortions of form. Their focus on the human figure was in part a reaction to the rapid transformations affecting society-industrialization and urbanization, as well as changing attitudes to sexuality.
Expressionism, as such work came to be known, emerged in several distinctive artistic centers. these included Vienna, where Egon Schiele forged a brand of searingly psychological portraiture; Munich where Vasily Kandinsky and others associated with Der Blaue Reiter [The Blue Rider] emphasized the spiritual values they found in nature and folk culture; Dresden, where Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and others in the Brucke [Bridge] group created scenes of their daily life that were, as Kirchner recalled, ' strange to the normal person ... [and] driven by a totally naive, pure need to bring art and life into harmony with each other'. A desire for intensely personal expression and emotional authenticity unified the impulses of these artists.
Egon Schiele's 'Portrait of Gerti Schiele' from 1909 I found the most interesting in this room. It is dark, shadowed, with an oddly shaped body and very odd hand. What are we to make of this? The tilt of the head and the 'exposure' of the nape of her neck with that black mass approaching gives me a sense of submission but not to a kiss.
August Macke 'Lady in a Park' 1914. Macke's death in the second month of the First World War at the age of 27 gives me pause to wonder at the presence of that dark figure on her left who looks to be tugging on her arm.
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