Expressionnism

Expressionism, artistic style in which the artist seeks to depict not objective reality but rather the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse in him. He accomplishes his aim through distortion, exaggeration, primitivism, and fantasy and through the vivid, jarring, violent, or dynamic application of formal elements. In a broader sense Expressionism is one of the main currents of art in the later 19th and the 20th centuries, and its qualities of highly subjective, personal, spontaneous self-expression are typical of a wide range of modern artists and art movements. Expressionism can also be seen as a permanent tendency in Germanic and Nordic art from at least the European Middle Ages, particularly in times of social change or spiritual crisis, and in this sense it forms the converse of the rationalist and classicizing tendencies of Italy and later of France.

Expressionism assessed itself mostly in Germany, in 1910, (MÝnchen, Dresde, Berlin), as heir of a national trend related to GrÝnewald: the Wallraf-Richartz museum, in KÆln, has the richest collection of this era. As an international movement, expressionism has also been thought of as inheriting from certain medieval artforms and, more directly, CÈzanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh and the fauvism movement. Gustave Moreau was already saying not to believe to the reality of what he touched or saw, but instead to his own interior perception; expressionism has been holding this theory to its extreme application.

The most famed German expressionists are Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Lyonel Feininger, George Grosz, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, August Macke, Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein; the Austrian Oskar Kokoschka, the Czech Alfred Kubin and the Norvegian Edvard Munch are also related to this movement. During his stay in Germany, the Russian Kandinsky was also an expressionism addict.

Painters as varied as Georges Rouault, Henry de Waroquier, Marcel Gromaire, Edouard Goerg have also been qualified of ``French expressionists''. Other members were, in Belgium, James Ensor, Permecke, Van der Bergue, Servaes were seen as disciples of JÈrÒme Bosch and Bruegel, the Dutch Leo Gestel, the Danish SÆrensen, the British Lyall Watson. Among the members of the Paris school, Soutine, Pascin and Modigliani have been attached to expressionism.

Le terme nouveau d'expressionnisme est venu du mot «expression» pris dans son sens classique de «reprÈsentation des passions». Si l'on se rÈfÕre Þ la proposition de Diderot, «on a de l'expression avant d'avoir de l'exÈcution et du dessin», il ne faut pas s'Ètonner que le terme «Expressionismus» ait ÈtÈ proposÈ par la critique allemande, il y a cinquante ans, pour qualifier en gÈnÈral toute peinture, mais particuliÕrement celle oÛ la reprÈsentation des sentiments humains passe avant la rÈsolution des problÕmes purement plastiques... C'est un retour Þ une forme sentimentale de Romantisme.
-- M. Raynal, la Peinture moderne.

Dans les jours troublÈs qui suivirent la dÈfaite, l'expressionnisme envahit la rue berlinoise, les affiches, le thÈÁtre, la dÈcoration des cafÈs, les boutiques et les Ètalages (...) Les films doivent devenir des dessins rendus vivants, proclamait alors Herman Warm (...) L'horreur, le fantastique et le crime dominent l'expressionnisme qu'on aurait pourtant tort de considÈrer comme une transition entre le Grand­Guignol et la terreur amÈricaine Þ la Frankenstein (...) Sur le plan technique, l'expressionnisme Èvolua sans perdre son principe : une vision subjective du monde (...) L'emploi expressif de la lumiÕre devint la marque du cinÈma allemand, expressionniste ou non.
-- Georges Sadoul, Histoire d'un art, le cinÈma.