Unit Two: Spirit, Material, Revolution, and Discontent
Guiding Questions
- How did concept (i.e. idea) and form (i.e. style) unify in early Expressionism?
- How did major political events—including Germany’s colonial exploits, WWI, the worker’s movements in the post-WWI period, a fluctuating economy, and the rise of National Socialism—manifest themselves both formally and thematically in Expressionist and post-Expressionist art?
- What continuities exist between the Romanticist and Hegelian interest in art as a means of self-understanding and the motivations of Expressionist and Post-Expressionist artists? How is “authenticity” (as well as “realism”) defined and redefined across these artistic practices, including ones that were decidedly apolitical (i.e. the universal claims of Expressionism) and those that were explicitly political (i.e. the social critique and use of materials in Dada)?
- How did artists and the German public respond to technology and/or modern living? In what ways were these responses ambivalent or sometimes contradictory?
- How did the political imperatives of Dada and of some Neue Sachlichkeit artworks and photography replace the experimental ones of Expressionism? Why was that important?
Unit Schedule
Aside from the sections in Long, all readings, including optional texts, are available for download on each session page.
- Tuesday, August 2
- Session 3A: Expressionist Philosophies (Early Manifestations)
- Long, “Introduction,” xix – xxiv (Reading Journal entry is not required.)
- Long, “First Identifiers,” 3 – 20.
- Long, “The Brücke,” 21 – 36.
- Long, “Neue Künstler Vereinigung München and the Blaue Reiter,” 37 – 54.
- Long, “Der Sturm,” 55 – 66.
- Session 3B: Expressionist Forms (The Expansion of Expressionism)
- Long, “German Criticism through World War I,” 77 – 94.
- Long, “Painting,” 95 – 107.
- Long (with Stephanie Barron), “Sculpture,” 108 – 121.
- Long (with Ida Katherine Rigby), “Printmaking,” 140 – 153.
- Session 3A: Expressionist Philosophies (Early Manifestations)
- Thursday, August 4
- Session 4A: Primitivist Fantasies: Art and the German Colonies
- Sabine Wilke, “Romantic Images of Africa: Paradigms of German Colonial Paintings,” German Studies Review, 29.2 (May 2006): 285 – 298.
- Note that some of this text contains un-translated German, usually followed by a summary in English. We can certainly discuss the German as a class if you are interested.
- Visit http://www.jstor.org.oca.ucsc.edu/stable/27668035, also on ECommons, to access a copy of this PDF online with images.
- Andrew Zimmerman, “Primitive Art, Primitive Accumulation, and the Origin of the Work of Art in German New Guinea,” History of the Present, 1.1 (Summer 2011): 5 – 30.
- Sabine Wilke, “Romantic Images of Africa: Paradigms of German Colonial Paintings,” German Studies Review, 29.2 (May 2006): 285 – 298.
- Session 4B: War and Revolution
- Long (with Rigby), “The War Experience,” 161 – 172.
- Long (with Ida Katherine Rigby), “Critics, Artists, and the Revolution,” 173 – 190.
- Long (with Rigby), “Novembergruppe,” 210 – 221.
- Session 4A: Primitivist Fantasies: Art and the German Colonies
- Tuesday, August 9
- Session 5A: Gesamtkunstwerk: Utopia and the Built Environment
- Long (with Rosemarie Haag Bletter), “Expressionist Architecture,” 122 – 139.
- Long, “Arbeitsrat für Kunst,” 191 – 209.
- Long, “The Weimar Bauhaus,” 245 – 261.
- Session 5B: Gesamtkunstwerk: Film
- John S. Titford, “Object-Subject Relationships in German Expressionist Cinema,” Cinema Journal, 13.1 (Autumn 1973): 17 – 24.
- Anton Kaes, “Metropolis: City, Cinema, Modernity” in Expressionist Utopias: Paradise, Metropolis, Architectural Fantasy, ed. T. O. Benson (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1993), 146 – 165.
- Film Screening: Metropolis, Fritz Lang, 1927, 149’
- Session 5A: Gesamtkunstwerk: Utopia and the Built Environment
- Thursday, August 11
- Session 6A: Dada and the Politics of Mass Media
- Long, “Dada,” 262 – 278.
- George Grosz and Wieland Herzfelde, “Art is in Danger (1925),” Dadas on Art, ed. Lucy Lippard (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971), 80 – 85. (Please use PDF page #s for citations.)
- Hal Foster, “1920” in Art Since 1900, ed. Hal Foster (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2004), 168 – 173.
- Maud Lavin, “The Berlin Dada Photomontages,” Cut with the Kitchen Knife: The Weimar Photomontages of Hannah Höch (Yale University Press: 1993), 13 – 46.
- Session 6B: Neue Sachlichkeit: The Return to the Object
- Long, “The Critics and the ‘Demise’ of Expressionism,” 279 – 295.
- Sabine Eckmann “A Lack of Empathy. On the Realisms of New Objectivity” in New Objectivity: Modern German Art in the Weimar Republic, 1919-1933, eds. Stephanie Barron & Sabine Eckmann (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2015), 26 - 39.
- Ute Eskilden, “Germany: The Weimar Republic” in Illuminations: Women Writing on Photography from the 1850s to the Present, Liz Heron and Val Williams, eds. (Duke University Press: 1996), 53 – 64.
- Session 6A: Dada and the Politics of Mass Media
30% of final grade; due Tuesday, August 16 at the beginning of class
