6.2 Urban Angst: Expressionism, Weimar Politics, City Painting and Photography Flashcards
Edward Munch, The Scream (1893) Expressionism
- urban angst: ithe sity we are anonymous, isolated, surrounded, but alone.
- idea: to study soul and own self
- felt enormous infinite scream of nature (continuation of the sublime)
- black blue bloody river, apocalyptic sky, sense of hopelessness and despair
- body swaying into nothingness as if losing corporeal reality
Giorgio de Chirico, Mystery and Melancholy of a Street (1913) Surrealism
- stylistically realism, but bizarre juncture of objects
- Thought he was painting dreams. (Freud)
- Colonnade recedes infinitely
- empty cart for wild animals (who are on the loose)
- man’s shadow looms
Eugene Atget, Magasin (1925) pure photography
- marks transition from pictorialist tradition to pure photography? or was that stieglitz?
- storefront reflects bldg behind and photog
- mannequins lively - fake exuberance behind glass contrasts w/ desolate streets
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Seville, Spain (1934)
- photojournalist of war-torn countries
- “the decisive moment” - one that can’t be seen by the eyes - must be captured by camera
Expressionism
An umbrella term for early 20th C German modernistsgroups Die Bruche and Der Blau Reiter. Stylistically, they are often compared to the French Fauves.
Expressionist artists typically sought to present the world more as it relates to the subjective human experience than to ‘reality’, often distorting their depictions of world in order to evoke emotions or ideas. Expressionists were more concerned with the communication of meaning or ideas than with the representation of objective reality. Munch’s The Scream is an example.
Weimar Republic
The period between Germany’s defeat at the end of World War I in 1918, and Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, which saw a flourishing of arts and culture, and is acknowledged as one of the most intense periods of intellectual production in history.
How did artists express alienation about urban life?
Some artists show the desolation of city life - a place where we are surrounded by people, but alone – by showing the deserted, nighttime city. For example, Eugene Atget captures the isolation of urban life in Magasin (1925), in where a storefront full of fakely exuberant mannequins beam out at desolate streets and the solitary photographer. In Nighthawks (1942), Edward Hopper similarly situates the viewer outside a plateglass window, peering from deserted streets into the artificial greenish light of a late-night diner on moody, disinterested patrons.
DiChirico also gives us a nearly empty street in Mystery and Melancholy of a Street (1913), where a man looms around the corner, and a wild animal might lurk in the shadows.
Other artists use a painting style meant to communicate the emotions of urban angst. Edvard Munch’s The Scream, with its dark river and apocalyptic sky, gives us a sense of hopeless despair; alienation and aloneness; we shiver alongside its desperate figure.
German expressionist George Grosz, who saw the city as a place where people are either deprived or depraved, paints his alienation into The Funeral, dedicated to Oskar Panizza (1917-19), where we see a dense concentration of humanity at its absolute worst, crowded into the infernal streets.
