Expressionism & art Essay

Expressionism is a complex and often contradictory movement. It encompasses the excavation of the idea while liberating the body. Expressionism generally refers to anything that was non impressionism it could even include anti-impressionistic make for. Up to the outbreak of World contend I, the term expressionism was used to key any art work that was fauviste, futurist, modern, or cubist. Expressionism has qualities that be a more sensitive perception of the world. It attempts to portray the mind of the mechanic, shaping the figures which an artist paints or writes about.(Expressionism (literature)) Subjective human experience plays a large role in expressionist art. Because of this, expressionism has potential for despair and anguish, which is quite unlike any artistic movement that came before it. (Bassie, 7-10) Expressionism was not a exacting movement unlike surrealism or naturalism in literature or impressionism in painting, expressionism was the offering of ideas, not techniques. (Expressionism in Literature) For example, after World War I, people were anxious and aware that they were vulnerable.Expressionists worked through these emotions, through the fears of atomic war, creating art that was based on their own experiences and feelings. They refused to set limits on the emotional content of their work. (Sandler, 29-30) Franz Kafkas The metamorphosis and Max Beckmanns Departure are both expressionistic, however, Kafkas figment is the more powerful example of the qualities of expressionism. In Franz Kafkas The Metamorphosis, there is a passage where Gregor describes the horrors of his daily, a job he never wanted. Gregor mentions that he travels for a living, that that it is much more than working in the home office. He goes on to describe what he experiences and wishes that the devil take it all (Kafka, 688) This passage from Kafkas The Metamorphosis exhibits expressionism because it expresses Gregors human feelings, even though he has been t ransformed into an insect. It shows how he very feels, including anxiety and despair. For example, he speaks of his job, even the smallest detail. He detests his job, only working at it because his father owed Gregors boss m wholenessy. He details the commute, the sub par room-and-board, and the feature that he does not have any intimate friends, only acquaintances.However, later in the story, Gregor does begin to lose all of these feelings in favor of his feelings of being an insect. He begins to enjoy rotten cheese and climbing the walls of his bedroom. When his family forgets, or rather begins to not care, about him, transforming his bedroom into a storage area that he has to live with, Gregor realizes his feelings as an insect. According to Gustav Janouch, Kafka himself described The Metamorphosis as his own idea of horror. (1477) This transformation, like that of his physical being, is the embodiment of expressionism.This passage, as sanitary as the entire story, is a sexua l intercourse of change, from one state of being to another, from one process of thinking to another. It shows the human experience not because it deals with changing into an insect, but because each individual questions the nature of their reality their job, their family life, and their inner purpose. Max Beckmanns Departure exhibits expressionism because it shows human suffering and peace. In the first panel, people are tied up, perhaps being tortured, but intelligibly in agony. In the second panel, there are three individuals on a boat, seemingly at ease, catching fish.In the tertiary panel, two individuals are tied together, bodies flush against each other, one upside down, the other right side up. It as well as looks as though a bird is pecking at one of the individuals. Some believe that Beckmanns work is obscure, dense, and beyond understanding (Finch), however, that is not true of any work of art. Two out of the three panels show human suffering, which holds the majorit y in the world. Human suffering is experienced by more individuals at more points during their lives than any other feeling. That is the nature of life, the nature of the world.However, peace is also experienced, although not as frequently. For the individuals in the second panel, they seem content with where they are. Everyone experiences contentment in their lives, but for some it occurs so infrequently that those peaceful moments are overshadowed by suffering. This painting could also express Beckmanns move from Frankfurt to Berlin when the Nazis came to power in the 1930s. (Departure) For example, the individuals in the second panel could be traveling. The first and third panels could represent where they came from and where they were going.Beckmann did not want to leave Frankfurt, but he was forced to leave, and Berlin held nothing for him. In both the first and third panels, individuals are shown as suffering. peradventure this is what Beckmann was feeling due to his forced m ove. Expressionism manifests itself in different ways between literary and visual art works. In literary works, feelings are told as well as shown. One can show despair through description of detail and character development. The reader knows somewhat of a characters past, and perhaps how they got to where they are in a story.One does not experience this is visual art. One can only look at a painting and analyze and interpret what happened before and what would happen after, but there is no definite answer. The feeling interpreted from a painting are perhaps those that the viewer has enforce on it, not the feelings that the artist wanted to convey. Everyone has their own vision and opinion with writing, feelings and experiences are laid out clearly, with paintings, feelings and experiences are more the viewers than the artists.Because of these reasons, the literary arts can be more expressionistic than the visual arts. For example, Kafkas The Metamorphosis is more expressionistic t han Beckmanns Departure because Kafkas story is straightforward about the characters feelings, while Beckmanns painting is left too much up to viewer interpretation. Feelings expressed through art, if any, should be those of the artist who created it, not of the patron. Bassie, Ashley. Expressionism. New York Artists Rights Society, 2005. Bloom, Harold. Franz Kafka.Broomall, PA Chelsea House Publishers, 2003. Departure. Online Design Museum. 21 May 2009. http//www. cs. wayne. edu/zhw/csc691/tour1pic1detail. html Expressionism. Abstract Art. 21 May 2009. http//abstractart. 20m. com/expressionism. html Expressionism in Literature. Dictionary of the History of Ideas. 1 May 2003. 21 May 2009. http//etext. virginia. edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi. cgi? id=dv2-24 Expressionism (literature). Tiscali. 2009. 21 May 2009. http//www. tiscali. co. uk/reference/encyclopaedia/hutchinson/m0097410.html Finch, Charlie. Deciphering Beckmann. Artnet. 2004. 21 May 2009. http//www. artnet. com/magazi ne/features/finch/finch7-17-03. asp Janouch, Gustav. Kafkas View of The Metamorphosis. The Story and Its Writer. 7th ed. Ed. Ann Charters. New York Bedford/St. Martins, 2007. Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis. The Story and Its Writer. 7th ed. Ed. Ann Charters. New York Bedford/St. Martins, 2007. Sandler, Irving. The Triumph of American Painting A History of Abstract Expressionism. New York Praeger Publishers, Inc. , 1970.