in the meantime we have pop culture: roaring 20s, USA

this is in the middle of probihition.........

and after the Hollywood's code,

this is my female heroine of the mid 1920s,

advertising art shows simplified social scenes where things are shown as they should be, the homes shown are stereotyped, and the viewer's attention is directed to the foreground where the product is. things are photographed or drawn to seem more real than life. ads tend to flatten the visual space and be self-contained, abstracted

poster goes to WWI (our side of propaganda)

didactic,

message driven,

patriotic,

newsworthy,

propagandistic,

murnau's nosferatu and the expressionist influence in british and american cinema

                        the poster for f.w. murnau's nosferatu: eine symphonie des grauens. the film shot in 1921.

the complete film here. 

 psycho, 1960, alfred hitchcock

 downhill, 1931, hitchock photomontage

                                                                                 orson wells, citizen kane, 1941

 orson wells, lady from shanghai, 1947

 orson wells, citien kane, 1941

Bruno Taut's "outfit for the soul"

 

structure from outside

interior, 2nd floor

interior stairs and walls 

foster + partners’ swiss RE building

Bruno Taut designed his famed and ultra-influential fairy-tale pagoda Glass Pavilion, a small structure in glass and steel, set on a concrete base. Heralded the Utopian Expressionist architecture of the years prior and after WWI, this small jewel was one of the most ambitious expressions of the Expressionist theme of the crystalline and glass. Glass was chosen not only for its transparency and flexibility, but also for its mystical and romantic metaphor of spiritual transformation, as with its purity and clarity, it came to represent the supreme synthesis of form and beauty.

the buildroman of lynn ward (illustrations without words)

Bildroman (the visual novel) is an expressionist narrative genre in which sequences of images without captions are used to tell stories. the atmosphere is inspired by medieval cuts.

I find ward's work to have an overpowering feeling (which fits the expressionist program).

                                    frans masereel 25 images de la passion d' un homme, 1918

the awkward appearance of this medium helped express fear and frustration about social injustice.

                                                        cabinet des dr. caligari, 1920

Lynd Ward brought the genre to the US in 1929 when he produced Gods' man, which inspired other American visual novels and a 1930 parody by cartoonist Milt Gross called He Done Her Wrong

                                                                lynn ward, shine of dreams

 

                                                                                            lynn ward, god's man

                                                        lynn ward, god's man (block and print) 

 

click here for an article on ward on vulture. 

the new expressionist mark DIE BRÜCKE

a group of young germans people, their names are: Fritz Bleyl (1880–1966), Erich Heckel (1883–1970), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884–1976).

they met at the Königliche Technische Hochschule (a technical university) in Dresden. they named themselves "die brücke" meaning "the bridge." they invented the printmaking technique of linocut, although they initially described them as traditional woodcuts, which they also made.

what do we have here?

1. NOT OBJECTIVE EMOTIONS, 
2. SUBJECTIVE EXTREME EXPRESSION, THROUGH
3. EXTERNAL DISTORTION & CLAUSTROPHOBIC SPACES, 

EXPRESSIONISM!

click here for a short video, 

Der Blaue Reiter, what a gang!

Franz and Maria Marc, left, Heinrich Campedonk (second from right), Kandinsky seated, 1911

franz marc, blue horse, 1911

To Ed Schmid, the Expressionists were not photographers but people overcome by visions, concerned with catching not the "momentary effect of a situation" but "its eternal significance."

 

Don't try to describe us. We're concerned with the force of experience. Expressionist creation is a constant aura of never-ending excitement (From Bernard S. Myers's German Expresionists: A Generation in Revolt).

 

Poster by Max Pechstein

 

 

what are they doing? 

* blue is the color of spirituality (Kandinsky),

* the connection between music and the arts,

* they are into European medieval art and primitivism, 

* the contemporary, non-figurative art scene in France: Cubism, Fauvism, and Rayonism,

* an inclination towards abstraction.

Aleksey von Jawlensky, early 1900s

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, the mystic primitif

Christ has not manifested , 1918

The miraculous draught of fishes, 1918

portrait of Emy, 1919

In 1912 Karl Schmidt-Rottluff had an epiphany. He participated in the graphic exhibition of the Blaue Reiter in Munich & his art changed into mystical imagery.

deutscher werkbund: the path to german modern standardization

 

The Deutscher Werkbund was founded in 1907 in Munich as a response to widely held worries that Germany's rapid modernization was coming at the cost of its national culture. It brought together professors, craftsmen, industrialists, fine artists, politicians and designers. 

The group’s main intellectual leaders were Hermann Muthesius and Henry van de Velde. 

werkbund exhibition, 1914, bruno taut, gas pavillion, 

Werkbund was greatly influenced by William Morris' Arts and Crafts movement which proposed that industrial crafts be revived as a combined effort between both designers and craftsmen. But The Werkbund was primarily interested in the link between the artistic and the economic aspects of mass production. The Werkbund was against revivalism and believed that architecture should be a representation of the spirit of the age (zeitgeist).

Here we have a middle point: The Werkbund set out to produce architecture that utilized mass production but still made use of craftsmanship.

The Werkbund saw the potential of mass production and wanted German designers to take advantage of it. It was believed that mechanized production was incompatible with ornamentation (see Adolf Loos' influence here) and that products should be simplified down to their basic forms. To attempt to introduce their ideas the Werkbund implemented a program of certification for products.

factory building, office building, walter gropius, 1914 

But the two camps had their issues, which is why Werkbund splits into two different factions: The first, led by Muthesius, championed the greatest possible use of standardization and mechanical mass production. Van de Velde headed the other faction and maintained the notions of individual artistic expression.

Muthesius' ideas won. 

see how the mark of "symbolism" between romanticism and modernism (gaugin, redon, munch)

what unites these different different marks is the emphasis on emotions, feelings, ideas, and subjectivity rather than realism. the work is personal and expresses the artist's own will to reveal truth. symbolists combined exotic, religious mysticism, the perverse, the erotic, and the decadent.

Gaugin goes for the exotic.

Symbolist subject matter is typically characterized by an interest in the occult, the morbid, the dream world, melancholy, evil, and death.

Redon goes for the bizarre.

Instead of the one-to-one, direct-relationship symbolism found in earlier forms of mainstream iconography, the Symbolist artists aimed more for nuance and suggestion in the personal, half-stated, and obscure references called for by their literary and musical counterparts.

symbolism provided a transition from Romanticism in the early part of the nineteenth century to modernism in the early part of the twentieth century.

Munch goes for the decadent,

In addition, the internationalism of Symbolism challenges the commonly held historical trajectory of modern art developed in France from Impressionism through Cubism.