Art In Germany Research Articles

Cultures in Conflict: Visual Arts in Germany Since 1990

Cultures in Conflict: Visual Arts in Germany Since 1990

An Interview with Alessandro Cesar

An Interview with Alessandro Cesar Charles H. Rowell This interview was conducted at the home of the artist in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, December 23, 1995. Mauricio Virgens served as our interpreter during the taping. Agostino R. Strina translated the following text from Portuguese to English. CHARLES H. ROWELL: Before you went to Germany, you were living here in Bahia. Why did you go to Germany? ALESSANDRO CESAR: Traveling abroad was already on my mind before I went to Germany, but I had not decided specifically where I would travel. Actually my travel to Germany occurred by chance; I had not planned to travel there. A German friend of mine expressed an interest in showing my work in Germany. Later I got in touch with the German-Brazilian Association in Germany (whose function is the diffusion of the Brazilian culture in Germany). It was this association, along with the Brazilian Embassy in Bonn, that organized most of the exhibitions of my work in Germany. ROWELL: You spent two years working on your art in Germany. You recently returned here to your native Brazil. For you as artist, what is or was the meaning of your two-year stay in Germany? CESAR: During those two years, I literally lived only with my art. They were extraordinarily rich and very important years; they allowed me a chance to make a sort of self-analysis of my painting. Living a great distance from my original and familiar frame of reference, from my habitual living space, from my friends and family, I was allowed, during those two years, another perception of my work. I could also make a more critical analysis of the relations between the people and my work; I could penetrate deeper into the way the public looks at my paintings and at which levels the communication is produced. In Germany I had the opportunity of showing my work to a public that is very different from that in Brazil, specifically that here in Bahia. I am talking about a group of people who have a different culture, a different mentality, a different perspective of life. And I had a great curiosity about the people’s reactions to (some of them were surprises) and comments about my paintings. ROWELL: During your stay in Germany, did you discover anything about yourself as an artist? In other words, did those two years make a difference for you as an artist? [End Page 719] CESAR: I think traveling abroad is always beneficial for the artist. When I was in Germany, for example, I had access to new reference systems, to artists whose culture is different from my own, and to different art products. All of these caused me to reflect on issues and ideas and feelings I was not aware of in Brazil. But my stay in Germany did not change the essence of my soul, of me as a person, of me as an artist. Nor did it change the sources of my inspiration; those sources, of course, are still my roots, so to speak. ROWELL: Did your stay in Germany influence your idea of the artist? For you now, what is an artist? Does the artist have a social or political function? Or does the artist first communicate with himself/herself and then to others? CESAR: My stay in Germany had other consequences for me. For example, I dropped some of my values, I replaced others, and these changes affected my social and political positions, producing for me a new vision of things. In today’s world, where everything happens with a great speed, the access to information is practically instantaneous. Art relates and records the moments through which humanity passes. The artist is inserted in that context. The artist is, then, engaged in the social and political time in which he lives, and engagement is reflected in the art he/she produces. ROWELL: I asked about social and political functions of art after noticing the title of one of your paintings, “The Renunciation of Satisfaction,” a very powerful phrase which has both political and social implications for me when I relate the words to the painting itself. CESAR: It is very difficult...

The moment of self-portraiture in German Renaissance art

In this groundbreaking and elegantly written study, Joseph Koerner establishes the character of Renaissance art in Germany. Opening up newmodes of inquiry for historians of art and early modern Europe, Koerner examines how artists such as Albrecht Durer and Hans Baldung Grien reflected in their masterworks the changing status of the self in sixteenth-century Germany. [A] dazzling book. . . . He has turned out one of the most powerful, aswell as one of the most ambitious, art-historical works of the last decade. Anthony Grafton, New Republic Rich and splendid. . . . Joseph Koerner's book is a dazzling display of scholarship, enfolding Durer's artistic achievement within the broader issues of self and salvation, and like [Durer's] great Self-Portrait it holds up a mirror to the modern fable of identity. Bruce Boucher, The Times Remarkable and densely argued. Marcia Pointon, British of Aesthetics Herculean and brilliant. . . . Will echo in fields beyond the Sixteenth-Century and Art History. Larry Silver, Sixteenth Century Journal May be the most ambitious of recent American reflections on the mysteries of German art. His elegantly written book deals with the fateful period in the history of German art when it reached its highest point. . . . Offers deeper and more disturbing insights into German Renaissance art than most earlier scholarship. Willibald Sauerlander, New York Review of Books

Art in Germany, 1909-1936: from expressionism to resistance: the Marvin and Janet Fishman collection

Art in Germany, 1909-1936: from expressionism to resistance: the Marvin and Janet Fishman collection

The Theatre of the Weimar Republic

The most definitive, comprehensive study of the origins, development, achievements and ultimate destruction of the performing arts in Germany from World War I through the rise of Hitler, The Theatre of the Weimar Republic is an invaluable record of creativity born out of conflict. John Willett focuses on the intellectual and sociocultural factors that brought Weimar theatre to its peak and analyses the theatrical theories and movements of the era. In addition, he includes a unique section of appendices, spanning 1916 to 1945, supplementing the text and providing detailed information on theatres, actors, performances, films, and radio and gramophone recordings. The theatre during this period was marked by bold, innovative playwrighting and directing as well as by important advances in theatrical architecture, lighting, and stage design. Renowned talents such as Brecht, Piscator, Toller, and Weill were nurtured, and influential movements and credos -- including Expressionism, agitprop, and Bauhaus theatre projects -- developed. A rigorous, fascinating assessment of the world-wide influences of Weimar theatre during its lifetime and in later years, the book will appeal to all readers interested in the art and politics of this turbulent period.

Amy Fay: The American Years

When American pianist Amy Fay returned to United States in 1875 after six years of study in Germany, she already was a celebrity of sorts in cultivated circles. Her letters to her sister Melusina Peirce, in which she describes musical life in Germany and music study in particular, had appeared in Atlantic Monthly in 1874 and served to introduce her to a large public. Her colorful verbal portraits of such great musical masters as Tausig, Kullak, and Liszt and her vivacious accounts of German musical life proved both entertaining and instructive for her readers and won for her an enthusiastic following. When, through efforts of her sister and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Fay's letters finally were published in book form by Jansen and Maclurg in 1880 under title Music Study in Germany,1 her public widened. According to Fay genealogy,2 during author's lifetime it went through twenty-five editions in America. Ethelbert Nevin once remarked that it was the book of age.3 It stimulated many American students to make a serious study and profession of music. Frequently it was given as a prize for proficiency in girls' schools,4 and undoubtedly it proved an incentive for young musicians world over to study their chosen art in Germany.5 The popularity of book has endured to present, so much so, in fact, that it has tended to distract attention of public from other equally important accomplishments of its author. Musicians and amateurs alike know of Amy Fay principally as author of Music Study in Germany,6 while for most part they remain uninformed about her career at home. Yet it was in preparation for that career that Fay spent so many years studying music in Germany under direction of some of leading European pianists. Furthermore, toward end of her European sojourn, Fay eagerly anticipated her return to United States, so that she could test her musical

Modern German Drama: A Study in Form by Christopher Innes (review)

Book Reviews CHRISTOPHER INNES. Modern German Drama: A Study in Form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1979. Pp. ix, 297, illustrated. Christopher Innes is best known for his earlier Cambridge University Press book: Erwin Piscator's Political Theatre: The Development 0/ Modern German Drama. In a real sense, the Piscator book is a very useful background reading before beginning Innes's new book on the German theatre after World War II. All talk of a "point zero" in the arts in Germany in 1945 Dotwithstanding , it is abundantly clear that in the postwar theatre the "new beginning" is rather heavily dependent on returning exiles such as Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht. It is very much to Professor Innes's credit that he is able to see both tbat which is radically new in postwar theatre and that which has deep roots in the pre-1933 German theatre. It is also important that Innes does not allow himself to be caught in the trap of choosing between the two Germanies. His study is a sane balance of the various German-speaking countries: Switzerland , Austria, the German Democratic RepubHc, and the German Federal Republic. The study is further enriched by the author's comparative approach to the German drama/theatre. The different productions of the different German-speaking nations are compared, and the study shows great sensitivity not only to the ways in which the modern German drama has been enriched by borrowings from other national traditions, but also to the ways in which these other traditions have been enriched by borrowings from the German drama. All this is a considerable achievement of synthesis, description, and analysis. but Innes goes further yet. Not content to describe his materials as literary artifacts, he insists on treating plays as performance texts with real actors and real audiences. As a result, his book is not just a study of modern German drama as the title erroneously suggests. The volume is a study both of the drama per se and of the modern German theatre as a complex cultural institu- 312 Book Reviews tion with state support and with all the benefits and nightmares that official "slipport" has involved in the long and checkered history of the German stage. We have in Innes's work not merely a history of the critical reception of texts but something much more complex: a history of how plays were chosen and rehearsed as well as a history of how they were then received by critics and the general public. All this material il) buttressed in Innes's study by the facts and figures of the box office. Though this book examines a great many data, it is neither turgid nor colorless . The data are presented in a lively style and with sensitive attention to major details of productions. What emerges is a composite picture of the modern German theatre with all of its liveliness, problems, and contradictions . Though priced in hard-cover beyond all reason, the book in paper will be of extraordinary benefit to anyone wishing to have a comprehensive and reliable overview of modern German theatre. JOHN FUEOJ, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND CHRISTOPHER INNES. Holy Theatre: Ritual and the Avant Garde. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1981. Pp. xi. 283. illustrated. Christopher Innes has written a highly instructive and cogent volume on Holy Theatre, tying all the loose strings together, systematizing what had been askew, explaining what had remained moot. Antonin Artaud, who created the. expression "Holy Theatre," applied it to a "spiritual" performance in which drama could gain transcendence; he was not referring to a religious happening in the sense of organized religion, but rather using the Latin word religio, which means a linking back to a mythological or primitive past, to an iIIo tempore - a beginning. The theatre, then, is to be viewed as a laboratory in which mythical material is explored and the "naked actor," when inhabiting the stage, is to be viewed as an archaic being, in archetypal attitudes. Innes, therefore, concentrates on "imagistic and quasireligious plays or psychodramas" which do not emphasize verbal or rely exclusively upon cerebral means of communication, but, on the contrary, focus upon dreams, the unconscious as a way of arousing...

Readings in Russian Poetics: Formalist and Structuralist Views

The Formal method is code of criticism, having its analogues in other than verbal arts, which arose in Russia shortly before the 1920s. Part of larger momentum which in general turned away from theory as means to understanding art, as for instance, did scholarship in the fine arts in Germany, the Formalists undertook to establish study on new, specific basis. They wished to limit themselves to the actual instance of art in front of them, and to bring to it only such materials as would an empirical investigator; theirs was, in the words of spokesman, a special scientific discipline concerned with literature as specific system of facts. In this system they wished to discover the defining features: what is it in work of literature that makes it specifically literary work?These are the issues raised by the Formalists. The subsequent history of their movement is an elaboration of this theoretical ground. Examples of Formalist thinking from the movement's origins through its major redefinitions and most significant expansions show much of the notable work that has been done in furthering the cause of studies as systematic discipline. This volume is collection of the most important contributions concerning the Formalist school, most of them translated for the first time from the Russian or the Czech. The editors have included articles on the general theory, on problems in the study of poetry, on selected problems in prose, and on specific works (including some by Dickens and O. Henry). The contributors include B. M. Ejxenbaum, Roman Jakobson, M. M. Baxtin, V. N. Volosinov, and others. In addition, the editors have each contributed retrospective and summarizing articles.

Rörande formuleringen av ett nonfigurativt bild‐språk och den romantiska traditionell i Tyskland

Summmary The Question of Formulating a Non‐Figurative Picture‐Language and the Romantic Tradition in Germany This is a preparatory study to a planned work around the theme stated in the title. The final departure from the principle of realistic representation did not imply a denial of “nature” and “reality”. The words were only given a wider definition. The non‐figurative picture (we are here dealing only with the German art) is playing on a wide scale from the scientific to the “reality” of occult inspiration. The relationship between art and our conception of both an “outer” and an “inner'’ reality was a basic problem for the founders of modern art in Germany. The way the modernists formulated this problem—I am thinking mainly of Marc, of Kandinsky and the Russians in Munich, Klee, Itten and many others—reveals a deep affinity with the aestheticism of the Romantics (Goethe, Schelling, Runge...). The connection between the Romanticism's ‘aesthetics and the modern pioneers has been noted before. But usually the common denominator has been spoken of in terms like “subjectivity”, “emotionalism”, which obscures the essential: the aspiration to objectivity, the view of art as a medium to knowledge and the thoughts around the symbolical functions of the picture. In this study these parallels are developed on the basis of the aspiration to gain “a completely new art”, which characterizes both periods—the early 19th and the early 20th centuries. This aspiration—here called “the regeneration problem” —is described and analyzed with i.a. Schiller, Novalis and Runge and the circle around Der Blaue Reiter as starting point. In their belief in art as an instrument in forming a new humanity and a new community, the moderns (I here allude to the above mentioned artists) regarded themselves as heirs to the Romantics. To Runge (as to other art philosophers as Goethe, Schelling) the artist's task was to “uncover the creative power behind the natural phenomena”. The new art which the Romantics dreamed about should not depict but recreate—their motifs should not be the phenomena but the action. The static conception of nature was exchanged for a dynamic. This aspiration explaines Runge's claim to “scientifically” founded knowledge about the creative means of art. His “Farbkugel” was an experiment in this direction. The same view on art as an “organism” and the same demand for an objective theory about the creative means signalize a hundred years later artists like Marc, Kandinsky, Klee and Schlemmer. The paths along which the central ideas of Romanticism's art theory has reached the moderns, is discussed in the latter part of the study. To a certain extent the literary sources were known (i.a. the colour systems of Goethe and Runge; Novalis, Jean Paul). Among the aesthetics from the latter part of the 18th century, who undoubtedly have meant a great deal, prominence is given to Lipps, Volkelt, Vischer and Fiedler. Vischer especially must have served as an important link. One very important intermediary of Romantic thought was the young Steiner when he published with commentaries the natural science part of the works of Goethe (the large Weimar edition). Steiner's formulations on Goethe's aesthetic theory (e.g. “Goethe as the father of a new aesthetics") can be found in Klee's theoretical studies. General comparisons between Schiller's “Letters on the aesthetic education of man”, Steiner's pedagogic program and the Bauhaus pedagogics are made. Lastly is presented a Romantic “forerunner” to Bauhaus: Hamburgische Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Künste und nützlichen Gewerbe. We tend to divide art's historical development into periods and so easily forget the causes which can be active during several “epochs”. Ideas develop much more slowly and have a wider scope than we usually allow for. This study tries to give examples of this. The Romantics tried in theory to solve problems which a hundred years later should be guiding a group of important artists in Germany in their practical activity. Grossly simplified the problems can be summed up in the word “Symbol”.

Wagnerian Overtones In Der Tod In Venedig.

In the history of modern music the first performance of Der Ring des Nibelungen at Bayreuth in August 1876 was an event without precedent or parallel. Never had the premiere of a musical work taken place under such unique circumstances and before such an audience. Nor had any previous musical composition demanded so much of the listener, who was required to keep in mind not only the content of four complex and highly symbolic poems, but also the ninety Leitmotive which unify the work structurally into an architectonic whole. Because the new work was such a radical break with traditional operatic form, critical opinion was divided. Even those who disliked it, however, realized that it was an important milestone in the history of opera, and that the name of its composer was henceforth to be reckoned with. From that time on anyone interested in contemporary art simply had to come to terms with Wagner and his music, for, as Nietzsche points out in Der Fall Wagner, Wagner was modern art.' For several decades after his death he continued to be the most prominent figure in contemporary art in Germany, and Thomas Mann was only one of many there who succumbed to the appeal of his emotionally charged music dramas. Mann's enthusiasm dates back to the years when he heard Gerhiuser, the great Heldentenor, in

Modern Art in Germany: A Report on Current Writings

Modern Art in Germany: A Report on Current Writings

Postwar Art in Germany

Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the postwar artistic situation in Germany is its complete lack of direct response to the conditions of the time. We may assume that the preponderant interest in various forms of abstraction, chiefly abstract surrealism and abstract expressionism, represents an attempt to escape from the unpleasant realities of a bombed out world. At the same time, we must contend with a considerable quantity of middle-of-the-road painting and sculpture, pleasant subjects done in a pleasant manner, that clutter the annual exhibitions of Kunstvereine throughout Germany. In their own way these also fall into the category of refusing to face reality.

Postwar Art in Germany

Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the postwar artistic situation in Germany is its complete lack of direct response to the conditions of the time. We may assume that the preponderant interest in various forms of abstraction, chiefly abstract surrealism and abstract expressionism, represents an attempt to escape from the unpleasant realities of a bombed out world. At the same time, we must contend with a considerable quantity of middle-of-the-road painting and sculpture, pleasant subjects done in a pleasant manner, that clutter the annual exhibitions of Kunstvereine throughout Germany. In their own way these also fall into the category of refusing to face reality.

Works of Art in Germany (British Zone of Occupation) Losses and Survivals in the War. By Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Branch of the Control Commission for Germany.

<i>Works of Art in Germany (British Zone of Occupation) Losses and Survivals in the War</i>. By Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Branch of the Control Commission for Germany.

The Early Art of Northern Europe a review

He various publications here reviewed consist of works which are united by their subject-matter but they differ widely from each other in character and scope. The work of Mr Kilbride-Jones1 is a monograph strictly confined to certain objects found in a certain part of Europe; that of Mr Hallstrom, on the other hand, consists of what may be called a comprehensive monograph—that is to say, it brings together and relates several straightforward descriptions of a sin le subject (rock-art), but covers many different parts of a large archaeological region. Messrs Kühn and Adama van Scheltema have touched upon a vast subject—prehistoric and protohistoric art in Germany—so that their productions assume the form of text-books.