Pioneering Marxist art critic Charmion von Weigand turns her attention to the Expressionists.

‘Expressionism and Social Change’ by Charmion von Wiegand from Art Front. Vol. 2 No. 10. November, 1936.

IN the last decade, the ancient quarrel between objective and subjective painting a dispute paralleling similar disputes in philosophy and in literature has been the bone of contention between the Abstractionists and the Surrealists. The preceding decade of 1926 to 1936 dramatized this familiar dualism in the terms of Cubism versus Expressionism. During that time, the Expressionists in Germany were absorbed in pursuing their souls across the chaos of post-war society in the quest of a spiritual revolution divorced from crude materialist political and economic change. In contrast, the Cubists of France, in the midst of post-war social disintegration, sealed themselves into ivory towers and, coldly serene as surgeons, dissected the physical world and its all-too-human beings into the formal elements of eternal art.

Today the anarchistic, individualist revolt of the Expressionists of Germany seems as far away from the contemporary American scene as the crusades of the middle ages. American painting, little influenced by the currents of mid-European art, reacted scarcely at all to their dynamic outbursts of line and color. But, in the last years, one by one, many mid-European painters have come to the United States to stay. With the advent of Hitler, a new wave of German intelligentsia arrived. Up to that moment, the United States had exerted more influence on the distinguished visiting foreign artists than they on it. Archipenko, once a rebellious Futurist of great reputation, has become an academic professor of art; George Grosz, the once great satirist of Prussian autocracy and social decadence, has taken to painting landscapes; David Burliuck, former “Blue Rider,” paints murals for the Federal Art Project but retains a social point of view. The one mid-European painter to leave his stamp on recent American painting was Jules Pascin, who spent some years in New York in the golden age of the twenties. His style, a fragile modernist Rococo of pre-war Europe, affected such diverse painters as George Biddle, Emil Ganso, and Yasuo Kunyioshi. His influence was, in part, due to the pleasantly sensuous nature of art, his frivolous avoidance of serious subject matter or experimental problems. Possessing a dexterous technique, he was fated to enchant the painters of American prosperity with a surface charm, which became his nemesis; while those more serious exiled artists, who had suffered all the agonies of the post-war epoch, could of necessity not be appreciated until the American artist had experienced some equally disturbing social upheaval. This was furnished by the economic catastrophe of 1929. Only now, after seven years of economic stagnation and unemployment, has the American artist began to revolt against the conditions of capitalist society. Only now has appeared a situation favorable to the creation of Expressionist art in the United States.

Expressionism as a form in art (this includes poetry, drama, music and literature as well as the plastic arts) arises always in a period of great social change, when the individual is forced to repudiate the principles on which society is built. Rebelling violently but without program, he turns to the inner voice of conscience and to his own repressed instincts for new wisdom and guidance. Out of the surrounding disintegration of social forms, arises the stark and lonely soul of man definitely facing the universe, seeking in the whispers of his blood and in his dreams, in madness even, in the romantic past of primitive cultures, in the exotic surroundings of natural man a safe escape from the complexities of modern life, which has ceased to function satisfactorily for the vast majority, because of serious inner contradictions within the body of society. Such an attitude of defiance may lead either to fascism, as in the case of Hans Johst, the dramatist, or to Communism as in the case of Berthold Brecht. Such a confused rebellion is animated by both reactionary and progressive elements. But the general movement of Expressionism which seeks to break up the old forms, suffuses them in the brilliant colors of sunset, espouses the universal man against the petty individual, is forward moving. Its destructive activism is necessary in clearing the ground for future building.

For this reason, the recent exhibition of the work of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff at the Westerman Gallery, was of great interest for American painters. Here was shown an Expressionist painter, who enjoyed a great prestige in Germany in the years 1913 to 1924. Here was a painter, once known as a rebel, who has continued to live in Nazi Germany and is now shown in a German gallery here. For the most part, the thirty-six canvases and water colors exhibited belong to his recent years (after 1926) and, in particular, the last two years, but the inclusion of three canvases from his ripe period around 1913 offered the spectator a measure by which to interpret what happens to the creative artist under the repressive regimentation of Nazi Germany.

Back in 1903, three young painters of Dresden founded a new school of painting. With the usual fanfare of manifestos, protests, and a scandal over their first exhibition (1906) held in a store for lighting fixtures, they were born as Die Bruecke–the bridge between the old world and the new. Their names were Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Erich Heckel. Appearing almost simultaneously with the Fauves in France, the Expressionists emphasized the subjective revolt of the individual. Later they took over many of the technical innovations of the Fauves-the use of broad masses, the demand for monumental pictures which stretched the limits of the easel, the use of complementary color in brilliant juxtaposition unhampered by local color; the distortion of form to evoke emotional response. They were joined by other enthusiastic painters, among them Max Pechstein and Emil Nolde and all of them later made art history. Their most powerful influences in painting were van Gogh; the Swiss painter, Hodler; and Edvard Munch, that strange Norwegian, whose spectral evocations on canvas are curiously akin to Strindberg’s nightmare dramas.

It is difficult today before the present work of Schmidt-Rottluff to dramatize the rage and resentment which these young painters stirred up in the correct society of old Germany. There even the most advanced art connoisseurs felt themselves daringly liberal when they espoused Impressionism–albeit a diluted Berlin official version represented by the work of Corinth and Liebermann. In the light of the present, the step between the followers of Monet, Pissaro, and Manet, and the disciples of Cezanne, Gauguin, and van Gogh, does not seem unbridgeable. Socially, the young Expressionists belonged to the petit bourgeoisie as did the Impressionists from whom they sprang. They reached beyond their own class only in their dreams; their revolt had much of the religious fervor and mysticism of the tumultuous time of the Reformation. They sought to shatter the foundations of the old world but could not break even the shackles of their own class.

At first, they shocked and excited the indignation of the bourgeoisie. In the twenties, after the middle classes had suffered defeat and economic bankruptcy, they were tolerated and even became popular with the most advanced sections of it.

Schmidt-Rottluff’s richly composed patterns, Pechstein’s reflections of primitive South Sea art, Nolde’s religious vision, Erich Heckel’s nervous lyricism, Otto Mueller’s angular maidens, Kirchner’s dynamic drawing–nothing here reaches beyond a personal protest and Bohemian rebellion. These men did not come to an understanding and espousal of the social struggle in political terms, as did some few younger artists, for instance, George Grosz. The work of the Bridge summed up in the light of latest history displays a decorative rather than plastic sense of color; an emphasis on ornamentation rather than on content; a rather superficial interpretation of French experiments. True, the German audience was much further behind the French audience, than were the German painters behind their French masters and this must have had some effect in retarding experiment and discouraging ability. Dissolved in 1913, the Bridge merged into the larger group of the New Secession in Berlin. The latter, a revolting branch from the first Secession, was amalgamated with the Blue Riders (Blaue Reiter), the leading Expressionist group in Munich. Headed by Franc Marc, Vassili Kandinsky, and later Paul Klee, the Blue Riders were more daring in their experimentation, more directly concerned with the problems of their craft. Their influence was brought to bear on the Bridge painters. In particular, Schmidt-Rottluff felt the impact of Kandinsky, whose ideas left the most lasting impression on German modernist painting, and who, today in Paris has his followers.

The two schools–the Bridge and the Blue Riders–were the focus for the most radical Expressionism, although many painters of note, such as Lyonel Feininger, Karl Hofer, Otto Dix, Oskar Kokoschka, Max Beckmann and others, never officially joined them. Kandinsky, a Russian by birth, became the high priest of subjective absolutism in painting. His unrepresentative art, highly individual, related closest to the Cubists. But while the plastic of Picasso and his school approached closest to sculpture through its concern with three dimensional volumes of the physical world interpreted in idealist idiom, Kandinsky’s abstract art, motivated always by a spiritual idea, remained essentially mystic and closer to the art of music. A fundamental barrier separated the art of Expressionism from the majority of the French modernists. The latter, remaining in the classic tradition of Europe, occupy themselves primarily with the problem of form and space. The Expressionists’ chief concern is with line and rhythm, often to the exclusion of the third dimension, and leading to a painting of ornamentation like written music. In this, they follow the secondary line of western painting as found in Gothic art; in the 14th century Siennese, like Simone Martini; or in Botticelli, Tintoretto, El Greco, Mathias Gruenewald and others. Many critics not visualizing that its approach is totally different, have assumed that it may be inferior. Nevertheless, it remains the fundamental esthetic on which oriental art is based.

When the Expressionists–John the Baptists of a new world, riders of the Apocalypse–were faced with the onslaught of the war, and drafted into the German army, they marched off singing “Deutschland ueber Alles.” Max Pechstein, enjoying a South Sea idyll in the Pacific, made his way home across America to enlist. Schmidt-Rottluff served out the duration of the war as a private soldier. The young Franz Marc, August Macke, along with many other artists and writers, fell fighting. To many was vouchsafed a sudden understanding of the meaning of the war and a consequent revolt. But the painters of the Bridge lived through the great historic events of the Russian Revolution, the defeat of Germany, the failure of the German Revolution, the economic paralysis, without becoming socially active or experiencing any profound change in their art. The brief cultural renaissance which flowered in Germany from the blood of German workers was expressed by a younger generation–one which actively entered the class struggle–Piscator, Toller, Brecht, Eisler, George Grosz and others. With stabilization, the reaction was again on top and the promise of a new world was superseded by the active, more difficult struggle for a better life in the actual world. Once confused rebels, now facing sharp issues, they had to choose between Fascism and Communism. Some frightened by former boldness were driven back along the path of reaction. Others took a definite stand. One great class-conscious artist-George Grosz-has left the record of those years from 1918 through the middle twenties, a living panorama of that time, which castigates the old classes in cold hatred–the Prussian military castes, the inflation parvenues, the smug bourgeoisie.

How irreconcilable the conflict was and what the “cultured” bourgeoisie thought of such art may be summed up in the words of Wilhelm von Bode, leading art critic of Germany and curator of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum: “This new culture of Dadaism which for almost a lifespan has deformed art, and, not the least our German art, is the last expression of a mixture of insanity, lust, and emptiness. It must be conquered, and if we no longer have the energy to do so ourselves, then Bolshevism will make an end of it and of us at the same time.” It is clear that Hitler’s attack on modernist art fully a decade later, merely reflected the bitter prejudice and hatred of the decaying bourgeoisie against all progressive ideas. For even in its remote and ivory-tower attitudes, modernist art has moved for the most part in a progressive line.

In studying the canvasses of Schmidt-Rottluff, one may see what happens to the artist esthetically, when he refuses to come to grips with social reality. The three early canvases loaned by Mrs. Riefstahl show a deep consideration for the organization of form–they exhibit a severe and narrow concentration on essentials and an emotionally satisfying palette. The two landscapes are somewhat reminiscent of the early Kandinsky. Today Schmidt-Rottluff’s color has become more vivid but less functional; it serves an illustrative purpose chiefly. Several of the larger simplified canvases would serve for excellent posters. Nor is this said in a derisive spirit but merely to point out that commercial art in the last ten years has caught up with the Expressionists and makes use of their discoveries on its own level. There is nothing inherently bad in this, rather it proves the creativeness of art. Certainly Picasso and Matisse have profoundly changed the industrial arts of today–even down to the furniture we use and the fabrics we wear. What distresses is when the creative artist is unable to go on changing and creating.

In the case of Schmidt-Rottluff, an over simplified neo-realism replaces the former interest in form, a color formula has grown out of former color experiment. Little is left of the exuberant recklessness which gave the Expressionists such verve and freedom. In some of the water colors, the sketches of leaves and feathers and small things have the painstaking detail of old German painting, and I for one prefer them to the late oils for here is naturalism freshly observed. The recent paintings suffer from a poverty of idea and an evasion of reality made more apparent by their approach to realism. These lyric idylls of seascapes and moonscapes seem unreal and cold in a world of bitter conflict today.

No one can envy the lot of the artist or the writer in Germany today. Few of them are willing to strut in Nazi uniform like the corrupt Gottfried Benn, former Expressionist poet. The majority suffer in silence, their work repudiated in their homeland because it is modernist and in the outside world because it is German, they lead a shadow life, deprived of life-giving currents of thought and action. which alone can give meaning to art. Everything that is creative in Germany has either been destroyed or thrust underground to await another spring.

But the forces which caused Expressionism to flower in post-war Germany are active in other lands. The same struggle takes place elsewhere in terms of today. For this reason the Expressionist artists must have a deep interest for America. Neither abstract art nor academic pictorialism are satisfactory means to embody the social struggle of our time as it assumes ever more dramatic and violent form in the United States. While the religious mysticism of German Expressionism is alien to us, its activism is a vehicle suited to American vitality. It is not possible to predict what forms American expressionism may take, but we already have a few painters working in Expressionist form, who point the way. Helen West Heller’s painting is a link between that older Expressionism and the present, as is David Burliuk’s work. Younger painters who follow in this line include the group of painters called the Ten, and Benjamin Kopman, Milton Avery, Herbert Kruckman, Alice Neel and John Vavak. The latter’s picture Whirling Dust Storm in the recent exhibition New Horizons in Art of the W.P.A.

Federal Art Project at the Museum of Modern Art demonstrates how a contemporary American subject may be realized in Expressionist form. There are undoubtedly other painters who are developing in this direction. American democracy is changing under our eyes. As the process gains momentum, whatever its direction, the situation for the rise of Expressionism in the arts will be born.

Art Front was published by the Artists Union in New York between November 1934 and December 1937. Its roots were with the Artists Committee of Action formed to defend Diego Rivera’s Man at the Crossroads mural soon to be destroyed by Nelson Rockefeller. Herman Baron, director of the American Contemporary Art gallery, was managing editor in collaboration with the Artists Union in a project largely politically aligned with the Communist Party USA.. An editorial committee of sixteen with eight from each group serving. Those from the Artists Committee of Action were Hugo Gellert, Stuart Davis, Zoltan Hecht, Lionel S. Reiss, Hilda Abel, Harold Baumbach, Abraham Harriton, Rosa Pringle and Jennings Tofel, while those from the Artists Union were Boris Gorelick, Katherine Gridley, Ethel Olenikov, Robert Jonas, Kruckman, Michael Loew, C. Mactarian and Max Spivak.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/parties/cpusa/art-front/v2n10-nov-1936.pdf