Expressionism

HYSTERIA

OF

GREEN AND RED

Nguyen Thanh Nam Suong

NGU13385876

t.nguyen8@arts.ac.uk

Unit 7: Subject, Discipline, Individual Practice

Unit Leader: Dr. James Hellings

As far as the humanity existed, people were interested in the hidden side of life, in something they could not see and touch. They were actively questioning the meaning of their existence, what they were feeling and going through emotionally, what were their thoughts and ideas about, what did their dreams and desires mean. In the world of art the expression of various emotions and feelings can be found in a number of art movements involving Expressionism and Symbolism. In this essay the ideology of Expressionism will be discussed along side with the theory of hysteria that is a key feature of such movements as Expressionism, Surrealism and Symbolism. Edvard Munch's works, their meaning and ideas will be commented on in the light of the symbolic and expressionist concepts.

Expressionism

The term of "expressionism" was widely used by any kind of artists since the very 1850s, though the artist Julien-Auguste Herve originates the term by calling his paintings, which were exhibited in 1901 in Paris, the Expressionismes (Willett, 1976, p.274). The Czech art historian Antonin Matějček stated, that Expressionism is the antonym of Impressionism: "An Expressionist wishes, above all, to express himself... (an Expressionist rejects) immediate perception and builds on more complex psychic structures... Impressions and mental images that pass through mental peoples soul as through a filter which rids them of all substantial accretions to produce their clear essence [...and] are assimilated and condense into more general forms, into types, which he transcribes through simple short-hand formulae and symbols" (Walter, 1998). The popularity of Expressionist concept escalated simultaneously in cities across Germany as the response to a widespread anxiety about humanity's increasingly contradictory relationship with the world in order to fill in the lost feelings of authenticity and spirituality.

As a revolt against Impressionism and academic art, Expressionism was heavily influenced by the movements it was overlapping with, mainly with the "isms" of modernist art: Futurism, Cubism, Surrealism and Dada and in the early years of the century, the term was widely used to apply to a variety of styles, including Post-Impressionism. (E. Grace, 1989, p.26). In addition to the above, the Expressionist movement was also affected by the art of Symbolist ideology in the late 19th century. It was inspired by such painters as Vincent Van Gogh, Edvard Munch and James Ensor; their work was encouraging in usage of strong colours to represent anxiety and depression (Zigrosser, 1957, p.5). Mainly, it was a really intense and bold form of the emotional experience, the key idea was the self psychoanalysis, the exploration of man's inner life. The artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was considered to be the founder of such group that rejected academic rules in painting and called themselves Avant-Garde, and also was one of the first artists of the Expressionist movement. "My goal was always to express emotion and experience with large forms and simple colours and it is my goal today" (ibid, p.15). As for the painting technique, Expressionists used swirling, swaying, loose and exaggeratedly executed brushstrokes in the depiction of their objects. It is clear that each artist has influenced each other with many of the artist's paintings involving sweeping slashes in a jarring movement across the painting. Often the compositions are unimpressive aesthetically, even though through the dynamic brushstroke history, bold colours and the sense of extreme emotion one artist can make the audience to experience the inner drama and sometimes even horror.

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