1.
Edvard Munch
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One of his best known works is The Scream of 1893. Edvard Munch was born in a farmhouse in the village of Ådalsbruk in Løten, United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway, to Laura Catherine Bjølstad and Christian Munch, Christian was a doctor and medical officer who married Laura, a woman half his age, in 1861. Edvard had a sister, Johanne Sophie, and three younger siblings, Peter Andreas, Laura Catherine, and Inger Marie. Both Sophie and Edvard appear to have inherited their artistic talent from their mother, Edvard Munch was related to painter Jacob Munch and historian Peter Andreas Munch. The family moved to Christiania in 1864 when Christian Munch was appointed medical officer at Akershus Fortress, Edvards mother died of tuberculosis in 1868, as did Munchs favorite sister Johanne Sophie in 1877. After their mothers death, the Munch siblings were raised by their father, often ill for much of the winters and kept out of school, Edvard would draw to keep himself occupied. He was tutored by his mates and his aunt. Christian Munch also instructed his son in history and literature, and entertained the children with vivid ghost-stories, as Edvard remembered it, Christians positive behavior toward his children was overshadowed by his morbid pietism. Munch wrote, My father was temperamentally nervous and obsessively religious—to the point of psychoneurosis, from him I inherited the seeds of madness. The angels of fear, sorrow, and death stood by my side since the day I was born, Christian reprimanded his children by telling them that their mother was looking down from heaven and grieving over their misbehavior. The oppressive religious milieu, plus Edvards poor health and the vivid ghost stories, helped inspire his macabre visions and nightmares, one of Munchs younger sisters, Laura, was diagnosed with mental illness at an early age. Of the five siblings, only Andreas married, but he died a few months after the wedding, Munch would later write, I inherited two of mankinds most frightful enemies—the heritage of consumption and insanity. Christian Munchs military pay was low, and his attempts to develop a private side practice failed, keeping his family in genteel. They moved frequently from one flat to another. Munchs early drawings and watercolors depicted these interiors, and the objects, such as medicine bottles and drawing implements. By his teens, art dominated Munchs interests, at thirteen, Munch had his first exposure to other artists at the newly formed Art Association, where he admired the work of the Norwegian landscape school. He returned to copy the paintings, and soon he began to paint in oils, in 1879, Munch enrolled in a technical college to study engineering, where he excelled in physics, chemistry and math. He learned scaled and perspective drawing, but frequent illnesses interrupted his studies, the following year, much to his fathers disappointment, Munch left the college determined to become a painter
2.
The Scream
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The Scream is the popular name given to each of four versions of a composition, created as both paintings and pastels, by Norwegian Expressionist artist Edvard Munch between 1893 and 1910. The German title Munch gave these works is Der Schrei der Natur, the works show a figure with an agonized expression against a landscape with a tumultuous orange sky. Arthur Lubow has described The Scream as an icon of modern art, Edvard Munch created the four versions in various media. The National Gallery in Oslo, Norway, holds one of two painted versions, the Munch Museum holds the other painted version and a pastel version from 1893. These three versions have not traveled for years, the fourth version was sold for $119,922,600 at Sothebys Impressionist and Modern Art auction on 2 May 2012 to financier Leon Black, the fourth highest nominal price paid for a painting at auction. The painting was on display in the Museum of Modern Art in New York from October 2012 to April 2013, also in 1895, Munch created a lithograph stone of the image. Of the lithograph prints produced by Munch, several examples survive, only approximately four dozen prints were made before the original stone was resurfaced by the printer in Munchs absence. The Scream has been the target of several high-profile art thefts, in 1994, the version in the National Gallery was stolen. It was recovered months later. In 2004, both The Scream and Madonna were stolen from the Munch Museum, and were recovered two years later. The original German title given by Munch to his work was Der Schrei der Natur, the Norwegian word skrik usually is translated as scream, but is cognate with the English shriek. Occasionally, the painting also has been called The Cry and he later described his inspiration for the image, One evening I was walking along a path, the city was on one side and the fjord below. I stopped and looked out over the sun was setting. I sensed a scream passing through nature, it seemed to me that I heard the scream, I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood. This explanation has been disputed by scholars, who note that Munch was a painter and was not primarily interested in literal renderings of what he had seen. Alternatively, it has suggested that the proximity of both a slaughterhouse and a lunatic asylum to the site depicted in the painting may have offered some inspiration. The scene was identified as being the view from a road overlooking Oslo, at the time of painting the work, Munchs manic depressive sister Laura Catherine was a patient at the asylum at the foot of Ekeberg. In 2004, an Italian anthropologist speculated that Munch might have seen a mummy in Florences Museum of Natural History, nonetheless, later studies have confirmed Rosenblums suggestion, disproving the Italian theory, for Munch had not been to Florence until after painting The Scream
3.
National Gallery (Norway)
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The National Gallery is a gallery in Oslo, Norway. Since 2003 it is administratively a part of the National Museum of Art, Architecture, in 2016 admission cost 100 Norwegian kroner. It was established in 1842 following a decision from 1836. Originally located in the Royal Palace, Oslo, it got its own building in 1882, designed by Heinrich Ernst. Former names of the museum include Den norske stats sentralmuseum for billedkunst, directors include Jens Thiis, Sigurd Willoch, Knut Berg, Tone Skedsmo and Anniken Thue. That the gallery had erroneously been labeled as technically unfit for paintings was reported in 2013, had never concluded about the fitness level, and Norways parliament had been misinformed about conclusions that in reality did not exist. ) In 2016 the price for admission doubled overnight, there are also 19th and 20th Century International paintings by Armand Guillaumin, Carl Sohn, Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, and Pablo Picasso. There are also Norwegian paintings by Adolph Tidemand, Hans Gude, Harriet Backer, and Lars Jorde
4.
Modernism
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Among the factors that shaped modernism were the development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by reactions of horror to World War I. Modernism also rejected the certainty of Enlightenment thinking, and many modernists rejected religious belief, the poet Ezra Pounds 1934 injunction to Make it new. Was the touchstone of the approach towards what it saw as the now obsolete culture of the past. In this spirit, its innovations, like the novel, atonal and twelve-tone music, divisionist painting and abstract art. Modernism explicitly rejected the ideology of realism and makes use of the works of the past by the employment of reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision, others focus on modernism as an aesthetic introspection. While J. M. W. Art critic Clement Greenberg describes the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood as proto-Modernists, There the proto-Modernists were, of all people, the Pre-Raphaelites actually foreshadowed Manet, with whom Modernist painting most definitely begins. They acted on a dissatisfaction with painting as practiced in their time, rationalism has also had opponents in the philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and later Friedrich Nietzsche, both of whom had significant influence on existentialism. A major 19th-century engineering achievement was The Crystal Palace, the huge cast-iron, Glass and iron were used in a similar monumental style in the construction of major railway terminals in London, such as Paddington Station and Kings Cross Station. These technological advances led to the building of structures like the Brooklyn Bridge. The latter broke all previous limitations on how tall man-made objects could be and these engineering marvels radically altered the 19th-century urban environment and the daily lives of people. Arguments arose that the values of the artist and those of society were not merely different, but that Society was antithetical to Progress, the philosopher Schopenhauer called into question the previous optimism, and his ideas had an important influence on later thinkers, including Nietzsche. Darwins theory of evolution by natural selection undermined religious certainty and the idea of human uniqueness, in particular, the notion that human beings were driven by the same impulses as lower animals proved to be difficult to reconcile with the idea of an ennobling spirituality. Karl Marx argued that there were fundamental contradictions within the capitalist system, historians, and writers in different disciplines, have suggested various dates as starting points for modernism. Everdell also thinks modernism in painting began in 1885–86 with Seurats Divisionism, the poet Baudelaires Les Fleurs du mal, and Flauberts novel Madame Bovary were both published in 1857. In the arts and letters, two important approaches developed separately in France, the first was Impressionism, a school of painting that initially focused on work done, not in studios, but outdoors. Impressionist paintings demonstrated that human beings do not see objects, the school gathered adherents despite internal divisions among its leading practitioners, and became increasingly influential. A significant event of 1863 was the Salon des Refusés, created by Emperor Napoleon III to display all of the paintings rejected by the Paris Salon. While most were in standard styles, but by artists, the work of Manet attracted tremendous attention
5.
Art movement
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Art movements were especially important in modern art, when each consecutive movement was considered as a new avant-garde. According to theories associated with modernism and the concept of postmodernism, the period of time called modern art is posited to have changed approximately halfway through the 20th century and art made afterward is generally called contemporary art. Postmodernism in visual art begins and functions as a parallel to late modernism, the postmodern period began during late modernism, and according to some theorists postmodernism ended in the 21st century. During the period of time corresponding to modern art each movement was often considered a new avant-garde. Also during the period of time referred to as modern art movement was seen corresponding to a somewhat grandiose rethinking of all that came before it. Generally there was a commonality of visual style linking the works, postmodernist theorists posit that the idea of art movements are no longer as applicable, or no longer as discernible, as the notion of art movements had been before the postmodern era. There are many theorists however who doubt as to whether or not such an era was actually a fact, the term refers to tendencies in visual art, novel ideas and architecture, and sometimes literature. In music it is common to speak about genres and styles instead. See also cultural movement, a term with a broader connotation, as the names of many art movements use the -ism suffix, they are sometimes referred to as isms. 20th-century Western painting Art periods List of art movements Post-expressionism Western art history the-artists. org Art movements since 1900, 20th-Century Art Compiled by Dr. Witcombe, Sweet Briar College, Virginia. WebMuseum, Paris Themes index and detailed glossary of art periods
6.
Poetry
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Poetry has a long history, dating back to the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. Early poems evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese Shijing, or from a need to retell oral epics, as with the Sanskrit Vedas, Zoroastrian Gathas, and the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Ancient attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotles Poetics, focused on the uses of speech in rhetoric, drama, song and comedy. Later attempts concentrated on such as repetition, verse form and rhyme. From the mid-20th century, poetry has sometimes been more generally regarded as a creative act employing language. Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretation to words, devices such as assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia and rhythm are sometimes used to achieve musical or incantatory effects. The use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony and other elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations. Similarly figures of such as metaphor, simile and metonymy create a resonance between otherwise disparate images—a layering of meanings, forming connections previously not perceived. Kindred forms of resonance may exist, between verses, in their patterns of rhyme or rhythm. Some poetry types are specific to cultures and genres and respond to characteristics of the language in which the poet writes. Much modern poetry reflects a critique of poetic tradition, playing with and testing, among other things, in todays increasingly globalized world, poets often adapt forms, styles and techniques from diverse cultures and languages. Some scholars believe that the art of poetry may predate literacy, others, however, suggest that poetry did not necessarily predate writing. The oldest surviving poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, comes from the 3rd millennium BCE in Sumer. An example of Egyptian epic poetry is The Story of Sinuhe, other forms of poetry developed directly from folk songs. The earliest entries in the oldest extant collection of Chinese poetry, the efforts of ancient thinkers to determine what makes poetry distinctive as a form, and what distinguishes good poetry from bad, resulted in poetics—the study of the aesthetics of poetry. Some ancient societies, such as Chinas through her Shijing, developed canons of poetic works that had ritual as well as aesthetic importance, Classical thinkers employed classification as a way to define and assess the quality of poetry. Later aestheticians identified three major genres, epic poetry, lyric poetry, and dramatic poetry, treating comedy and tragedy as subgenres of dramatic poetry, Aristotles work was influential throughout the Middle East during the Islamic Golden Age, as well as in Europe during the Renaissance. English Romantic poet John Keats termed this escape from logic Negative Capability and this romantic approach views form as a key element of successful poetry because form is abstract and distinct from the underlying notional logic
7.
Painting
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Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface. The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, Painting is a mode of creative expression, and the forms are numerous. Drawing, gesture, composition, narration, or abstraction, among other aesthetic modes, may serve to manifest the expressive, Paintings can be naturalistic and representational, photographic, abstract, narrative, symbolistic, emotive, or political in nature. A portion of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by motifs and ideas. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action, the term painting is also used outside of art as a common trade among craftsmen and builders. What enables painting is the perception and representation of intensity, every point in space has different intensity, which can be represented in painting by black and white and all the gray shades between. In practice, painters can articulate shapes by juxtaposing surfaces of different intensity, thus, the basic means of painting are distinct from ideological means, such as geometrical figures, various points of view and organization, and symbols. In technical drawing, thickness of line is ideal, demarcating ideal outlines of an object within a perceptual frame different from the one used by painters. Color and tone are the essence of painting as pitch and rhythm are the essence of music, color is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but in the East, some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe, Kandinsky, and Newton, have written their own color theory. Moreover, the use of language is only an abstraction for a color equivalent, the word red, for example, can cover a wide range of variations from the pure red of the visible spectrum of light. There is not a register of different colors in the way that there is agreement on different notes in music. For a painter, color is not simply divided into basic, painters deal practically with pigments, so blue for a painter can be any of the blues, phthalocyanine blue, Prussian blue, indigo, cobalt, ultramarine, and so on. Psychological and symbolical meanings of color are not, strictly speaking, colors only add to the potential, derived context of meanings, and because of this, the perception of a painting is highly subjective. The analogy with music is quite clear—sound in music is analogous to light in painting, shades to dynamics and these elements do not necessarily form a melody of themselves, rather, they can add different contexts to it. Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, as one example, collage, some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their texture. Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet and Anselm Kiefer, there is a growing community of artists who use computers to paint color onto a digital canvas using programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, and many others. These images can be printed onto traditional canvas if required, rhythm is important in painting as it is in music
8.
Avant-garde
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The avant-garde are people or works that are experimental, radical, or unorthodox, with respect to art, culture, and society. It may be characterized by nontraditional, aesthetic innovation and initial unacceptability, the avant-garde pushes the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the status quo, primarily in the cultural realm. The avant-garde is considered by some to be a hallmark of modernism, the avant-garde also promotes radical social reforms. Several writers have attempted, with limited success, to map the parameters of avant-garde activity, the Italian essayist Renato Poggioli provides one of the best-known analyses of vanguardism as a cultural phenomenon in his 1962 book Teoria dellarte davanguardia. Other authors have attempted both to clarify and to extend Poggiolis study, bürgers essay also greatly influenced the work of contemporary American art-historians such as the German Benjamin H. D. Buchloh. Buchloh, in the collection of essays Neo-avantgarde and Culture Industry critically argues for an approach to these positions. Subsequent criticism theorized the limitations of these approaches, noting their circumscribed areas of analysis, including Eurocentric, chauvinist, and genre-specific definitions. The concept of avant-garde refers primarily to artists, writers, composers and thinkers whose work is opposed to cultural values. For Greenberg, these forms were therefore kitsch, phony, faked or mechanical culture, for instance, during the 1930s the advertising industry was quick to take visual mannerisms from surrealism, but this does not mean that 1930s advertising photographs are truly surreal. In this way the autonomous artistic merit so dear to the vanguardist was abandoned and sales became the measure. It has become common to describe successful rock musicians and celebrated film-makers as avant-garde, nevertheless, an incisive critique of vanguardism as against the views of mainstream society was offered by the New York critic Harold Rosenberg in the late 1960s. Since then it has been flanked by what he called avant-garde ghosts to the one side, and this has seen culture become, in his words, a profession one of whose aspects is the pretense of overthrowing it. Avant-garde in music can refer to any form of working within traditional structures while seeking to breach boundaries in some manner. The term is used loosely to describe the work of any musicians who radically depart from tradition altogether, although most avant-garde composers have been men, this is not exclusively the case. Women avant-gardists include Pauline Oliveros, Diamanda Galás, Meredith Monk, there are movements in theatre history that are characterized by their contributions to the avant-garde traditions in both the United States and Europe. Among these are Fluxus, Happenings, and Neo-Dada, Avant-garde – Wikipedia book Barron, Stephanie, and Maurice Tuchman. The Avant-garde in Russia, 1910–1930, New Perspectives, Los Angeles County Museum of Art Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. Los Angeles, CA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art ISBN 0-87587-095-3, Cambridge, MA, ISBN 0-671-20422-X Berg, Hubert van den, and Walter Fähnders
9.
Weimar culture
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1920s Berlin was at the hectic center of the Weimar culture. Although not part of the Weimar Republic, some also include the German-speaking Austria. Germany, and Berlin in particular, was ground for intellectuals, artists. The social environment was chaotic, and politics were passionate, German university faculties became universally open to Jewish scholars in 1918. Nine German citizens were awarded Nobel prizes during the Weimar Republic, five of whom were Jewish scientists, Jewish intellectuals and creative professionals were among the prominent figures in many areas of Weimar culture. The intellectuals associated with the Institute for Social Research fled to the United States, the culture of the Weimar year was later reprised by the left-wing intellectuals of the 1960s, especially in France. Deleuze, Guattari and Foucault reprised Wilhelm Reich, Derrida reprised Husserl and Heidegger, Guy Debord, by 1919, an influx of labor had migrated to Berlin turning it into one of the most fertile grounds for the modern arts and sciences in history. This caused a boom in trade, communications and construction, even before the War, this change significantly turned over the ways of the royalty. People used their backyards and basements to run small shops, restaurants, workshops and this led to the establishment of bigger and better commerce in Berlin, including its first department stores, prior to World War I. An urban petty bourgeoisie along with the middle class colonized and flourished the wholesale commerce, retail trade, factories, types of employment were becoming more modern, shifting gradually, but noticeably, towards industry and services. Before World War I, in 1907,54. 9% of German workers were manual labourers and this dropped to 50. 1% by 1925. Office workers, managers, and bureaucrats increased their share of the market from 10. 3% to 17% over the same period. Germany was slowly becoming more urban and middle class, still, by 1925, only a third of Germans lived in large cities, the other two-thirds of the population lived in the smaller towns or in rural areas. The total population of Germany rose from 62.4 million in 1920 to 65.2 million in 1933, the most prominent philosophers with which the so-called Frankfurt School is associated were Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Jürgen Habermas and Max Horkheimer. Among the prominent philosophers not associated with the Frankfurt School were Martin Heidegger, the German philosophical anthropology movement also emerged at this time. Many foundational contributions to quantum mechanics were made in Weimar Germany or by German scientists during the Weimar period, Göttingen was the center of research in aero- and fluid-dynamics in the early 20th century. Mathematical aerodynamics was founded by Ludwig Prandtl before World War I, and it was there that compressability drag and its reduction in aircraft was first understood. A striking example of this is the Messerschmitt Me 262, which was designed in 1939, albert Einstein rose to public prominence during his years in Berlin, being awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921
10.
Expressionist architecture
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Brick Expressionism is a special variant, that dominates in western and northern Germany and the Amsterdam School in the Netherlands. The term Expressionist architecture initially described the activity of the German, Dutch, Austrian, Czech, subsequent redefinitions extended the term backwards to 1905 and also widened it to encompass the rest of Europe. Ephemeral exhibition buildings were numerous and highly significant during this period, the major permanent extant landmark of Expressionism is Erich Mendelsohns Einstein Tower in Potsdam. A few, notably Hans Scharoun, continued to work in an expressionist idiom, in 1933, after the Nazi seizure of power in Germany, expressionist art was outlawed as degenerate. Until the 1970s scholars commonly played down the influence of the expressionists on the later International style, Expressionist architecture was individualistic and in many ways eschewed aesthetic dogma, but it is still useful to develop some criteria which defines it. Though containing a variety and differentiation, many points can be found as recurring in works of Expressionist architecture. Distortion of form for an emotional effect, subordination of realism to symbolic or stylistic expression of inner experience. An underlying effort at achieving the new, original, and visionary, profusion of works on paper, and models, with discovery and representations of concepts more important than pragmatic finished products. Often hybrid solutions, irreducible to a single concept, themes of natural romantic phenomena, such as caves, mountains, lightning, crystal and rock formations. As such it is more mineral and elemental than florid and organic which characterized its close contemporary art nouveau, uses creative potential of artisan craftsmanship. Tendency more towards the gothic than the classical, Expressionist architecture also tends more towards the romanesque and the rococo than the classical. Though a movement in Europe, expressionism is as eastern as western and it draws as much from Moorish, Islamic, Egyptian, and Indian art and architecture as from Roman or Greek. Conception of architecture as a work of art, an influential body of the artistic community, including architects, sought a similar revolution as had occurred in Russia. The costly and grandiose remodelling of the Grosses Schauspielhaus, was reminiscent of the imperial past, than wartime budgeting. Artistic movements that preceded expressionist architecture and continued with some overlap were the arts and crafts movement and art nouveau or in Germany, unity of designers with artisans, was a major preoccupation of the Arts and Crafts movement which extended into expressionist architecture. The frequent topic of naturalism in art nouveau, which was prevalent in romanticism, continued as well. The naturalist, Ernst Haeckel was known by Finsterlin and shared his source of inspiration in natural forms, the Futurist and constructivist architectural movements, and the dada anti-art movement were occurring concurrently to expressionism and often contained similar features. Bruno Tauts magazine, Frülicht included constructivist projects, including Vladimir Tatlins Monument to the Third International, however, futurism and constructivism emphasized mechination, and urbanism tendencies which were not to take hold in Germany until the Neue Sachlichkeit
11.
German Expressionism
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German Expressionism refers to a number of related creative movements beginning in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin during the 1920s. These developments in Germany were part of a larger Expressionist movement in north and central European culture in such as architecture, dance, painting, sculpture. This article deals primarily with developments in German Expressionist cinema before, the German Expressionist movement was initially confined to Germany due to the isolation the country experienced during World War I. In 1916, the government had banned foreign films, the demand from theaters to generate films led to an increase in domestic film production from 24 films in 1914 to 130 films in 1918. With inflation also on the rise, Germans were attending films more freely because they knew that their moneys value was constantly diminishing, by the time the 1916 ban on imports was lifted, Germany had become a part of the international film industry. Various European cultures of the 1920s embraced an ethic of change, the plots and stories of the Expressionist films often dealt with madness, insanity, betrayal and other intellectual topics triggered by the experiences of World War I. Later films often categorized as part of the history of German Expressionism include Metropolis and M. This trend was a reaction against realism. Its practitioners used extreme distortions in expression to show an inner emotional reality rather than what is on the surface, the extreme anti-realism of Expressionism was short-lived, fading away after only a few years. However, the themes of Expressionism were integrated into films of the 1920s and 1930s, resulting in an artistic control over the placement of scenery, light. This dark, moody school of film making was brought to the United States when the Nazis gained power, Nazi film theorist Fritz Hippler though was a supporter of expressionism. Two further films produced in Nazi Germany using the expressionist style were “Das Stahltier” in 1935 by Willy Zielke, das Leben eines Titanen” in 1940 by Curt Oertel. Two genres that were influenced by Expressionism are horror film and film noir. Carl Laemmle and Universal Studios had made a name for themselves by producing such famous films of the silent era as Lon Chaneys The Phantom of the Opera. The German silent cinema was arguably far ahead of Hollywood during the same period, the cinema outside Germany benefited both from the emigration of German film makers and from German expressionist developments in style and technique that were apparent on the screen. The new look and techniques impressed other contemporary film makers, artists and cinematographers, in 1924, Alfred Hitchcock was sent by Gainsborough Pictures to work as an assistant director and art director at the UFA Babelsberg Studios in Berlin on the film The Blackguard. The immediate effect of the environment in Germany can be seen in his expressionistic set designs for that film. Hitchcock later said, I. acquired a strong German influence by working at the UFA studios Berlin, German expressionism would continue to influence Hitchcock throughout his career
12.
Expressionist music
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Theodor Adorno sees the expressionist movement in music, as seeking to eliminate all of traditional musics conventional elements, everything formulaically rigid. This he sees as analogous to the ideal of the scream. As well Adorno sees expressionist music, as seeking the truthfulness of subjective feeling without illusions, the three central figures of musical expressionism are Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils, Anton Webern and Alban Berg, the so-called Second Viennese School. Other composers that have associated with expressionism are Ernst Krenek, Paul Hindemith, Igor Stravinsky. Another significant expressionist was Béla Bartók in early works, written in the decade of the 20th century, such as Bluebeards Castle, The Wooden Prince. Important precursors of expressionism are Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler, Musical expressionism is closely associated with the music Arnold Schoenberg composed between 1908 and 1921, which is his period of free atonal composition, before he devised twelve-tone technique. It can therefore be said to begin with Schoenbergs Second String Quartet in which each of the four movements gets progressively less tonal and this may be representative of Schoenberg entering the new world of atonality. In 1909, Schoenberg composed the one-act monodrama Erwartung and this is a thirty-minute, highly expressionist work in which atonal music accompanies a musical drama centered around a nameless woman. Having stumbled through a disturbing forest, trying to find her lover, the plot is entirely played out from the subjective point of view of the woman, and her emotional distress is reflected in the music. The author of the libretto, Marie Pappenheim, was a recently graduated medical student familiar with Freuds newly developed theories of psychoanalysis, in 1909, Schoenberg completed the Five Pieces for Orchestra. These were constructed freely, based upon the subconscious will, unmediated by the conscious, as such, the works attempt to avoid a recognisable form, although the extent to which they achieve this is debatable. Between 1908 and 1913, Schoenberg was also working on a musical drama, the plot begins with an unnamed man, cowered in the centre of the stage with a beast upon his back. The mans wife has left him for another man, he is in anguish and she attempts to return to him, but in his pain he does not see her. Then, to himself, the man goes to a forge. The woman returns, and the man implores her to stay with him, but she kicks a rock upon him, and the final image of the act is of the man once again cowered with the beast upon his back. This plot is highly symbolic, written as it was by Schoenberg himself, although she had returned by the time Schoenberg began the work, their relationship was far from easy. The central forging scene is seen as representative of Schoenbergs disappointment at the popular reaction to his works. His desire was to create a masterpiece, as the protagonist does, once again, Schoenberg is expressing his real life difficulties
13.
Angst
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The word angst was introduced into English from the Danish, Norwegian and Dutch word angst and the German word Angst. It is attested since the 19th century in English translations of the works of Kierkegaard and it is used in English to describe an intense feeling of apprehension, anxiety, or inner turmoil. In common language, however, Angst is the word for fear. In other languages having the meaning of the Latin word pavor for fear, the word Angst has existed since the 8th century, from the Proto-Indo-European root *anghu-, restraint from which Old High German angust developed. It is pre-cognate with the Latin angustia, tensity, tightness and angor, choking, clogging, in Existentialist philosophy the term angst carries a specific conceptual meaning. The use of the term was first attributed to Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, in The Concept of Anxiety, Kierkegaard used the word Angest to describe a profound and deep-seated condition. Where animals are guided solely by instinct, said Kierkegaard, human beings enjoy a freedom of choice that we find both appealing and terrifying. Existential angst makes its appearance in musical composition in the early twentieth century as a result of both philosophical developments and as a reflection of the war-torn times. Angst began to be discussed in reference to music in the mid- to late 1950s amid widespread concerns over international tensions. Jeff Nuttalls book Bomb Culture traced angst in popular culture to Hiroshima, dread was expressed in works of folk rock such as Bob Dylans Masters of War and A Hard Rains a-Gonna Fall. The term often makes an appearance in reference to rock, grunge, nu metal. The dictionary definition of angst at Wiktionary
14.
El Greco
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Doménikos Theotokópoulos, most widely known as El Greco, was a painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. El Greco was a nickname, a reference to his Greek origin, El Greco was born in Crete, which was at that time part of the Republic of Venice, and the center of Post-Byzantine art. He trained and became a master within that tradition before traveling at age 26 to Venice, in 1570 he moved to Rome, where he opened a workshop and executed a series of works. During his stay in Italy, El Greco enriched his style elements of Mannerism. In 1577, he moved to Toledo, Spain, where he lived and worked until his death, in Toledo, El Greco received several major commissions and produced his best-known paintings. El Grecos dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries, El Greco has been characterized by modern scholars as an artist so individual that he belongs to no conventional school. He is best known for tortuously elongated figures and often fantastic or phantasmagorical pigmentation, El Grecos father, Geórgios Theotokópoulos, was a merchant and tax collector. Nothing is known about his mother or his first wife, also Greek, El Grecos older brother, Manoússos Theotokópoulos, was a wealthy merchant and spent the last years of his life in El Grecos Toledo home. El Greco received his training as an icon painter of the Cretan school. In 1563, at the age of twenty-two, El Greco was described in a document as a master, meaning he was already a master of the guild and presumably operating his own workshop. Three years later, in June 1566, as a witness to a contract, most scholars believe that the Theotokópoulos family was almost certainly Greek Orthodox, although some Catholic sources still claim him from birth. One of his uncles was an Orthodox priest, and his name is not mentioned in the Catholic archival baptismal records on Crete, prevelakis goes even further, expressing his doubt that El Greco was ever a practicing Roman Catholic. Important for his biography, El Greco, still in Crete, painted his Dormition of the Virgin near the end of his Cretan period. Three other signed works of Doménicos are attributed to El Greco, in 1563, at the age of twenty-two, El Greco was already an enrolled master of the local guild, presumably in charge of his own workshop. He left for Venice a few later, and never returned to Crete. His Dormition of the Virgin, of before 1567 in tempera, the painting combines post-Byzantine and Italian Mannerist stylistic and iconographic elements, and incorporates stylistic elements of the Cretan School. It was natural for the young El Greco to pursue his career in Venice, though the exact year is not clear, most scholars agree that El Greco went to Venice around 1567. Knowledge of El Grecos years in Italy is limited and this may mean he worked in Titians large studio, or not
15.
Positivism
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Positivism is a philosophical theory stating that positive knowledge is based on natural phenomena and their properties and relations. Thus, information derived from experience, interpreted through reason and logic. Positivism holds that knowledge is found only in this derived knowledge. Verified data received from the senses are known as empirical evidence, Positivism also holds that society, like the physical world, operates according to general laws. Introspective and intuitive knowledge is rejected, as are metaphysics and theology, Comte argued that, much as the physical world operates according to gravity and other absolute laws, so does society, and further developed positivism into a Religion of Humanity. The English noun positivism was re-imported in the 19th century from the French word positivisme, the corresponding adjective has been used in similar sense to discuss law since the time of Chaucer. Wilhelm Dilthey popularized the distinction between Geisteswissenschaft and Naturwissenschaften, the consideration that laws in physics may not be absolute but relative, and, if so, this might be more true of social sciences, was stated, in different terms, by G. B. Vico, in contrast to the positivist movement, asserted the superiority of the science of the human mind, Positivism asserts that all authentic knowledge allows verification and that all authentic knowledge assumes that the only valid knowledge is scientific. Émile Durkheim reformulated sociological positivism as a foundation of social research, Wilhelm Dilthey, in contrast, fought strenuously against the assumption that only explanations derived from science are valid. Dilthey was in part influenced by the historicism of Leopold von Ranke, at the turn of the 20th century the first wave of German sociologists, including Max Weber and Georg Simmel, rejected the doctrine, thus founding the antipositivist tradition in sociology. Later antipositivists and critical theorists have associated positivism with scientism, science as ideology, but can any one conceive of a more pointless philosophy, seeing that what we can say clearly amounts to next to nothing. If we omitted all that is unclear we would probably be left with completely uninteresting, Logical positivists rejected metaphysical speculation and attempted to reduce statements and propositions to pure logic. Strong critiques of this approach by philosophers such as Karl Popper, Willard Van Orman Quine and Thomas Kuhn have been highly influential, in historiography the debate on positivism has been characterized by the quarrel between positivism and historicism. Arguments against positivist approaches in historiography include that history differs from sciences like physics and ethology in subject matter and that much of what history studies is nonquantifiable, and therefore to quantify is to lose in precision. Experimental methods and mathematical models do not generally apply to history, Positivism in the social sciences is usually characterized by quantitative approaches and the proposition of quasi-absolute laws. A significant exception to this trend is represented by cultural anthropology, in psychology the positivist movement was influential in the development of operationalism. Economic thinker Friedrich Hayek rejected positivism in the sciences as hopelessly limited in comparison to evolved and divided knowledge. For example, much legislation falls short in contrast to pre-literate or incompletely defined common or evolved law, in contemporary social science, strong accounts of positivism have long since fallen out of favour
16.
Realism (arts)
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Realism in the arts is the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions, implausible, exotic and supernatural elements. Realism has been prevalent in the arts at many periods, and is in part a matter of technique and training. In the visual arts, illusionistic realism is the depiction of lifeforms, perspective. Realist works of art may emphasize the mundane, ugly or sordid, such as works of realism, regionalism. There have been various movements in the arts, such as the opera style of verismo, literary realism, theatrical realism. The realism art movement in painting began in France in the 1850s, the realist painters rejected Romanticism, which had come to dominate French literature and art, with roots in the late 18th century. Realism is the precise, detailed and accurate representation in art of the appearance of scenes. Realism in this sense is also called naturalism, mimesis or illusionism, realistic art was created in many periods, and it is in large part a matter of technique and training, and the avoidance of stylization. It becomes especially marked in European painting in the Early Netherlandish painting of Jan van Eyck, however such realism is often used to depict, for example, angels with wings, which were not things the artists had ever seen in real life. It is the choice and treatment of matter that defines Realism as a movement in painting. The development of increasingly accurate representation of the appearances of things has a long history in art. It includes elements such as the depiction of the anatomy of humans and animals, of perspective and effects of distance. Ancient Greek art is recognised as having made great progress in the representation of anatomy. Pliny the Elders famous story of birds pecking at grapes painted by Zeuxis in the 5th century BC may well be a legend, roman portraiture, when not under too much Greek influence, shows a greater commitment to a truthful depiction of its subjects. The art of Late Antiquity famously rejected illusionism for expressive force, scientific methods of representing perspective were developed in Italy and gradually spread across Europe, and accuracy in anatomy rediscovered under the influence of classical art. As in classical times, idealism remained the norm, intriguingly, having led the development of illusionic painting, still life was to be equally significant in its abandonment in Cubism. The depiction of ordinary, everyday subjects in art also has a history, though it was often squeezed into the edges of compositions. However these objects are at least largely there because they carry layers of complex significance, pieter Bruegel the Elder pioneered large panoramic scenes of peasant life
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Impressionism
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Impressionism originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s. The Impressionists faced harsh opposition from the art community in France. The development of Impressionism in the arts was soon followed by analogous styles in other media that became known as impressionist music. Radicals in their time, early Impressionists violated the rules of academic painting and they constructed their pictures from freely brushed colours that took precedence over lines and contours, following the example of painters such as Eugène Delacroix and J. M. W. Turner. They also painted scenes of modern life, and often painted outdoors. Previously, still lifes and portraits as well as landscapes were painted in a studio. The Impressionists found that they could capture the momentary and transient effects of sunlight by painting en plein air, the Impressionists, however, developed new techniques specific to the style. The public, at first hostile, gradually came to believe that the Impressionists had captured a fresh and original vision, even if the art critics and art establishment disapproved of the new style. In the middle of the 19th century—a time of change, as Emperor Napoleon III rebuilt Paris, the Académie was the preserver of traditional French painting standards of content and style. Historical subjects, religious themes, and portraits were valued, landscape, the Académie preferred carefully finished images that looked realistic when examined closely. Paintings in this style were made up of brush strokes carefully blended to hide the artists hand in the work. Colour was restrained and often toned down further by the application of a golden varnish, the Académie had an annual, juried art show, the Salon de Paris, and artists whose work was displayed in the show won prizes, garnered commissions, and enhanced their prestige. The standards of the juries represented the values of the Académie, represented by the works of artists as Jean-Léon Gérôme. In the early 1860s, four young painters—Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and they discovered that they shared an interest in painting landscape and contemporary life rather than historical or mythological scenes. A favourite meeting place for the artists was the Café Guerbois on Avenue de Clichy in Paris, where the discussions were led by Édouard Manet. They were soon joined by Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, during the 1860s, the Salon jury routinely rejected about half of the works submitted by Monet and his friends in favour of works by artists faithful to the approved style. In 1863, the Salon jury rejected Manets The Luncheon on the Grass primarily because it depicted a woman with two clothed men at a picnic. While the Salon jury routinely accepted nudes in historical and allegorical paintings, the jurys severely worded rejection of Manets painting appalled his admirers, and the unusually large number of rejected works that year perturbed many French artists
18.
Friedrich Nietzsche
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He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869, Nietzsche resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life, and he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and he lived his remaining years in the care of his mother, and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, and died in 1900. Nietzsches body of work touched widely on art, philology, history, religion, tragedy, culture, and science, and drew inspiration from figures such as Schopenhauer, Wagner. His writing spans philosophical polemics, poetry, cultural criticism, and fiction while displaying a fondness for aphorism, born on 15 October 1844, Nietzsche grew up in the small town of Röcken, near Leipzig, in the Prussian Province of Saxony. He was named after King Frederick William IV of Prussia, who turned forty-nine on the day of Nietzsches birth, Nietzsches parents, Carl Ludwig Nietzsche, a Lutheran pastor and former teacher, and Franziska Oehler, married in 1843, the year before their sons birth. They had two children, a daughter, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, born in 1846, and a second son, Ludwig Joseph. Nietzsches father died from an ailment in 1849, Ludwig Joseph died six months later. The family then moved to Naumburg, where they lived with Nietzsches maternal grandmother, after the death of Nietzsches grandmother in 1856, the family moved into their own house, now Nietzsche-Haus, a museum and Nietzsche study centre. Nietzsche attended a school and then, later, a private school, where he became friends with Gustav Krug, Rudolf Wagner. In 1854, he began to attend Domgymnasium in Naumburg, because his father had worked for the state the now-fatherless Nietzsche was offered a scholarship to study at the internationally recognized Schulpforta. He transferred and studied there from 1858 to 1864, becoming friends with Paul Deussen and he also found time to work on poems and musical compositions. Nietzsche led Germania, a music and literature club, during his summers in Naumburg. His end-of-semester exams in March 1864 showed a 1 in Religion and German, a 2a in Greek and Latin, a 2b in French, History, and Physics, while at Pforta, Nietzsche had a penchant for pursuing subjects that were considered unbecoming. The teacher who corrected the essay gave it a mark but commented that Nietzsche should concern himself in the future with healthier, more lucid. After graduation in September 1864, Nietzsche commenced studies in theology, for a short time he and Deussen became members of the Burschenschaft Frankonia. After one semester, he stopped his studies and lost his faith. In June 1865, at the age of 20, Nietzsche wrote to his sister Elisabeth, who was deeply religious, a letter regarding his loss of faith
19.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
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Thus Spoke Zarathustra, A Book for All and None is a philosophical novel by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, composed in four parts between 1883 and 1885 and published between 1883 and 1891. Much of the deals with ideas such as the eternal recurrence of the same, the parable on the death of God, and the prophecy of the Übermensch. Thus Spoke Zarathustra was conceived while Nietzsche was writing The Gay Science, he made a note, reading 6,000 feet beyond man and time. Nietzsche planned to write the book in three parts over several years, Nietzsche commented in Ecce Homo that for the completion of each part, Ten days sufficed, in no case, neither for the first nor for the third and last, did I require more. The first three parts were first published separately, and were published in a single volume in 1887. The fourth part remained private after Nietzsche wrote it in 1885, in March 1892, the four parts were finally reprinted as a single volume. Since then, the version most commonly produced has included all four parts, the original text contains a great deal of word-play. An example of this is the use of words beginning über and unter, often paired to emphasise the contrast, an example is Untergang, literally down-going but used in German to mean setting, which Nietzsche pairs with its opposite Übergang. Another example is Übermensch, discussed later in this article, the book chronicles the fictitious travels and speeches of Zarathustra. Zarathustras namesake was the founder of Zoroastrianism, usually known in English as Zoroaster, Nietzsche is clearly portraying a new or different Zarathustra, one who turns traditional morality on its head. It possesses a unique style, one that is, for instance. Likewise, the separate Dithyrambs of Dionysus was written in autumn 1888, some speculate that Nietzsche intended to write about final acts of creation and destruction brought about by Zarathustra. Zarathustra also contains the famous dictum God is dead, which had appeared earlier in The Gay Science, in his autobiographical work Ecce Homo, Nietzsche states that the books underlying concept is discussed within the penultimate section of the fourth book of The Gay Science. It is the recurrence of the same events. This concept first occurred to Nietzsche while he was walking in Switzerland through the woods along the lake of Silvaplana, he was inspired by the sight of a gigantic, towering, pyramidal rock. Before Zarathustra, Nietzsche had mentioned the concept in the book of The Gay Science. Apart from its salient presence in Zarathustra, it is echoed throughout Nietzsches work. At any rate, it is by Zarathustras transfiguration that he embraces eternity, the Übermensch is one of the many interconnecting, interdependent themes of the story, and is represented through several different metaphors
20.
August Strindberg
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Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. From his earliest work, Strindberg developed innovative forms of action, language. He is considered the father of modern Swedish literature and his The Red Room has frequently described as the first modern Swedish novel. In Sweden, Strindberg is known as an essayist, painter, poet, and especially as a novelist and playwright, but in other countries he is known mostly as a playwright. The Royal Theatre rejected his first major play, Master Olof, in 1872, it was not until 1881, at the age of thirty-two, that its première at the New Theatre gave him his theatrical breakthrough. In Miss Julie, characterisation replaces plot as the predominant dramatic element and the role of heredity. During the 1890s he spent significant time abroad engaged in scientific experiments, a series of psychotic attacks between 1894 and 1896 led to his hospitalization and return to Sweden. Under the influence of the ideas of Emanuel Swedenborg, he resolved after his recovery to become the Zola of the Occult, in 1898 he returned to play-writing with To Damascus, which, like The Great Highway, is a dream-play of spiritual pilgrimage. He also returned to writing historical drama, the genre with which he had begun his play-writing career and he helped to run the Intimate Theatre from 1907, a small-scale theatre, modeled on Max Reinhardts Kammerspielhaus, that staged his chamber plays. Strindberg was born on 22 January 1849 in Stockholm, Sweden, in his autobiographical novel The Son of a Servant, Strindberg describes a childhood affected by emotional insecurity, poverty, religious fanaticism and neglect. When he was seven, Strindberg moved to Norrtullsgatan on the northern, a year later the family moved near to Sabbatsberg, where they stayed for three years before returning to Norrtullsgatan. He attended a school in Klara for four years, an experience that haunted him in his adult life. He was moved to the school in Jakob in 1860, which he found far more pleasant, in the autumn of 1861, he was moved to the Stockholm Lyceum, a progressive private school for middle-class boys, where he remained for six years. As a child he had a keen interest in science, photography. His mother, Strindberg recalled later with bitterness, always resented her sons intelligence and she died when he was thirteen, and although his grief lasted for only three months, in later life he came to feel a sense of loss and longing for an idealized maternal figure. Less than a year after her death, his father married the childrens governess, according to his sisters, Strindberg came to regard them as his worst enemies. He passed his exam in May 1867 and enrolled at the Uppsala University. Strindberg spent the few years in Uppsala and Stockholm, alternately studying for exams
21.
Frank Wedekind
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Benjamin Franklin Wedekind, usually known as Frank Wedekind, was a German playwright. His work, which often criticizes bourgeois attitudes, is considered to anticipate expressionism and was influential in the development of epic theatre, benjamin Franklin Wedekind was born on July 24,1864 in Hannover, Germany. His mother was Swiss and became pregnant with him in San Francisco and his father, a German, had a Swiss castle in which Wedekind grew up. Until World War I, when he was forced to obtain a German passport, he was an American citizen and he lived most of his adult life in Munich, though he had a brief period working in advertising, for the Maggi soup firm, in Switzerland in 1886. His sex life was prodigious and he frequented prostitutes, contracting syphilis and he also enjoyed the pleasure of platonic female company and kept his tendencies toward homosexuality and sadism in check. He had an affair with Frida Uhl who bore him a child, having worked in business and the circus, Wedekind went on to become an actor and singer. In this capacity he received acclaim as the principal star of the satirical cabaret Die elf Scharfrichter. At the age of 34, after serving a prison sentence for lèse-majesté. In 1906, he married the Austrian actress Tilly Newes,22 years his junior and his relationship with his wife was turbulent, with Wedekind prone to jealousy and he felt pressure to maintain strenuous creative and sexual activity in order to please her. They had two daughters, Pamela and Kadidja, but his led his wife to attempt both separation and suicide. Near the end of his life, Wedekind underwent an appendectomy and immediately began acting again and his doctor refused to operate immediately but Wedekind insisted and complications from the surgery led to his death at the age of 53 on March 9,1918. Tilly Wedekind went on to appear in films as Travelling People and was romantically linked to the author Gottfried Benn. In 1969, at age 83, she published an autobiography in German, Lulu, the Lulu plays Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora were probably his best known works until the 2006 adaptation of Spring Awakening. Karl Kraus also helped Wedekind stage it in Vienna, der Kammersänger is a one-act character study of a famous opera singer who receives a series of unwelcome guests at his hotel suite. In Franziska, the character, a young girl, initiates a Faustian pact with the Devil. Walerian Borowczyk based his 1980 film Lulu on these plays, currently the plays are being adapted into comics by John Linton Roberson. They also form the basis for the 2011 album Lulu, a collaboration between the rock musician Lou Reed and the metal band Metallica. Der Kammersänger was adapted by composer Hugo Weisgall for his English-language opera The Tenor, Wedekinds symbolist novella Mine-Haha, or On the Bodily Education of Young Girls was the basis for the films Innocence by Lucile Hadžihalilović and The Fine Art of Love by John Irvin
22.
Walt Whitman
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Walter Walt Whitman was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works, Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. His work was controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass. Born in Huntington on Long Island, Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, early in his career, he also produced a temperance novel, Franklin Evans. Whitmans major work, Leaves of Grass, was first published in 1855 with his own money, the work was an attempt at reaching out to the common person with an American epic. He continued expanding and revising it until his death in 1892, after a stroke towards the end of his life, he moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his health further declined. When he died at age 72, his became an public spectacle. Walter Whitman was born on May 31,1819, in West Hills, Town of Huntington, Long Island, to parents with interests in Quaker thought, Walter, the second of nine children, he was immediately nicknamed Walt to distinguish him from his father. Walter Whitman, Sr. named three of his seven sons after American leaders, Andrew Jackson, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson, the oldest was named Jesse and another boy died unnamed at the age of six months. The couples sixth son, the youngest, was named Edward, at age four, Whitman moved with his family from West Hills to Brooklyn, living in a series of homes, in part due to bad investments. Whitman looked back on his childhood as generally restless and unhappy, one happy moment that he later recalled was when he was lifted in the air and kissed on the cheek by the Marquis de Lafayette during a celebration in Brooklyn on July 4,1825. At age eleven Whitman concluded formal schooling, there, Whitman learned about the printing press and typesetting. He may have written sentimental bits of material for occasional issues. Clements aroused controversy when he and two attempted to dig up the corpse of Elias Hicks to create a plaster mold of his head. Clements left the Patriot shortly afterward, possibly as a result of the controversy, the following summer Whitman worked for another printer, Erastus Worthington, in Brooklyn. His family moved back to West Hills in the spring, but Whitman remained and took a job at the shop of Alden Spooner, at age 16 in May 1835, Whitman left the Star and Brooklyn. He moved to New York City to work as a compositor though, in later years, in May 1836, he rejoined his family, now living in Hempstead, Long Island. Whitman taught intermittently at various schools until the spring of 1838, after his teaching attempts, Whitman went back to Huntington, New York to found his own newspaper, the Long Islander
23.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, sometimes transliterated Dostoevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist and philosopher. He began writing in his 20s, and his first novel and his most acclaimed works include Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons and The Brothers Karamazov. Dostoyevskys oeuvre consists of 11 novels, three novellas,17 short stories and numerous other works, many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest psychologists in world literature. His 1864 novella Notes from Underground is considered to be one of the first works of existentialist literature, born in Moscow in 1821, Dostoyevsky was introduced to literature at an early age through fairy tales and legends, and through books by Russian and foreign authors. His mother died in 1837 when he was 15, and around the time he left school to enter the Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute. After graduating, he worked as an engineer and briefly enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, in the mid-1840s he wrote his first novel, Poor Folk, which gained him entry into St. Petersburgs literary circles. Arrested in 1849 for belonging to a group that discussed banned books critical of Tsarist Russia, he was sentenced to death. He spent four years in a Siberian prison camp, followed by six years of military service in exile. In the following years, Dostoyevsky worked as a journalist, publishing and editing several magazines of his own and later A Writers Diary and he began to travel around western Europe and developed a gambling addiction, which led to financial hardship. For a time, he had to beg for money, but he became one of the most widely read. His books have been translated more than 170 languages. Dostoyevskys parents were part of a multi-ethnic and multi-denominational Lithuanian noble family from the Pinsk region, branches of the family included Russian Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics and Eastern Catholics. Dostoyevskys immediate ancestors on his mothers side were merchants, the line on his fathers side were priests. His father, Mikhail, was expected to join the clergy but instead ran away from home, in 1809, the 20-year-old Mikhail Dostoyevsky enrolled in Moscows Imperial Medical-Surgical Academy. From there he was assigned to a Moscow hospital, where he served as military doctor, in 1819 he married Maria Nechayeva. The following year, he took up a post at the Mariinsky Hospital for the poor, Dostoyevskys parents subsequently had six more children, Varvara, Andrei, Lyubov, Vera, Nikolai and Aleksandra. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, born on 11 November 1821, was the child of Dr. Mikhail Dostoyevsky. He was raised in the home in the grounds of the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor
24.
Vincent van Gogh
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Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings and his suicide at 37 followed years of mental illness and poverty. Born into a family, Van Gogh drew as a child and was serious, quiet. As a young man he worked as an art dealer, often travelling and he turned to religion, and spent time as a Protestant missionary in southern Belgium. He drifted in ill health and solitude before taking up painting in 1881 and his younger brother Theo supported him financially, and the two kept up a long correspondence by letter. His early works, mostly still lifes and depictions of peasant labourers, in 1886 he moved to Paris, where he met members of the avant-garde, including Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, who were reacting against the Impressionist sensibility. As his work developed he created a new approach to still lifes and his paintings grew brighter in colour as he developed a style that became fully realised during his stay in Arles in the south of France in 1888. During this period he broadened his subject matter to include trees, cypresses, wheat fields. Van Gogh suffered from episodes and delusions and though he worried about his mental stability, he often neglected his physical health, did not eat properly. His friendship with Gauguin ended after a confrontation with a razor and he spent time in psychiatric hospitals, including a period at Saint-Rémy. After he discharged himself and moved to the Auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris and his depression continued and on 27 July 1890, Van Gogh shot himself in the chest with a revolver. He died from his injuries two days later, Van Gogh was unsuccessful during his lifetime, and was considered a madman and a failure. He became famous after his suicide, and exists in the imagination as the quintessential misunderstood genius. His reputation began to grow in the early 20th century as elements of his style came to be incorporated by the Fauves. The most comprehensive source on Van Gogh is the correspondence between him and his younger brother, Theo. Their lifelong friendship, and most of what is known of Vincents thoughts, Theo van Gogh was an art dealer and provided his brother with financial and emotional support, and access to influential people on the contemporary art scene. Theo kept all of Vincents letters to him, Vincent kept few of the letters he received, after both had died, Theos widow Johanna arranged for the publication of some of their letters. A few appeared in 1906 and 1913, the majority were published in 1914, Vincents letters are eloquent and expressive and have been described as having a diary-like intimacy, and read in parts like autobiography
25.
James Ensor
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James Sidney Edouard, Baron Ensor was a Belgian painter and printmaker, an important influence on expressionism and surrealism who lived in Ostend for almost his entire life. He was associated with the artistic group Les XX, Ensors father, James Frederic Ensor, born in Brussels of English parents, was a cultivated man who studied engineering in England and Germany. Ensors mother, Maria Catherina Haegheman, was Belgian, Ensor himself lacked interest in academic study and left school at the age of fifteen to begin his artistic training with two local painters. From 1877 to 1880, he attended the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, Ensor first exhibited his work in 1881. From 1880 until 1917, he had his studio in the attic of his parents house and his travels were very few, three brief trips to France and two to the Netherlands in the 1880s, and a four-day trip to London in 1892. In 1895 his painting The Lamp Boy was acquired by the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, against the advice of friends, he remained in Ostend during World War II despite the risk of bombardment. In his old age he was a figure among Belgians. He died there after an illness, on 19 November 1949. While Ensors early works, such as Russian Music and The Drunkards, depict scenes in a somber style, his palette subsequently brightened. Such paintings as The Scandalized Masks and Skeletons Fighting over a Hanged Man feature figures in grotesque masks inspired by the ones sold in his mothers gift shop for Ostends annual Carnival. Subjects such as carnivals, masks, puppetry, skeletons, Ensor dressed skeletons up in his studio and arranged them in colorful, enigmatic tableaux on the canvas, and used masks as a theatrical aspect in his still lifes. Attracted by masks plastic forms, bright colors, and potential for psychological impact, the four years between 1888 and 1892 mark a turning point in Ensors work. Ensor turned to themes, often the torments of Christ. Ensor interpreted religious themes as a personal disgust for the inhumanity of the world, in 1888 alone, he produced forty-five etchings as well as his most ambitious painting, the immense Christs Entry Into Brussels in 1889. Also known as Entry of Christ into Brussels, it is considered a forerunner of twentieth-century Expressionism, in this composition, which elaborates a theme treated by Ensor in his drawing Les Aureoles du Christ of 1885, a vast carnival mob in grotesque masks advances toward the viewer. Identifiable within the crowd are Belgian politicians, historical figures, nearly lost amid the teeming throng is Christ on his donkey, although Ensor was an atheist, he identified with Christ as a victim of mockery. The piece, which measures 99½ by 169½ inches, was rejected by Les XX and was not publicly displayed until 1929, after its controversial export in the 1960s, the painting is now at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. As Ensor achieved belated recognition in the years of the 19th century, his style softened
26.
Sigmund Freud
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Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst. Freud was born to Galician Jewish parents in the Moravian town of Freiberg and he qualified as a doctor of medicine in 1881 at the University of Vienna. Upon completing his habilitation in 1885, he was appointed a docent in neuropathology, Freud lived and worked in Vienna, having set up his clinical practice there in 1886. In 1938 Freud left Austria to escape the Nazis and he died in exile in the United Kingdom in 1939. In creating psychoanalysis, Freud developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association and discovered transference, Freuds redefinition of sexuality to include its infantile forms led him to formulate the Oedipus complex as the central tenet of psychoanalytical theory. His analysis of dreams as wish-fulfillments provided him with models for the analysis of symptom formation. On this basis Freud elaborated his theory of the unconscious and went on to develop a model of psychic structure comprising id, in his later work Freud developed a wide-ranging interpretation and critique of religion and culture. Though in overall decline as a diagnostic and clinical practice, psychoanalysis remains influential within psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy, nonetheless, Freuds work has suffused contemporary Western thought and popular culture. In the words of W. H. Audens 1940 poetic tribute, by the time of Freuds death, Freud was born to Jewish parents in the Moravian town of Freiberg, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the first of eight children. Both of his parents were from Galicia, in modern-day Ukraine and his father, Jakob Freud, a wool merchant, had two sons, Emanuel and Philipp, by his first marriage. Jakobs family were Hasidic Jews, and although Jakob himself had moved away from the tradition and he and Freuds mother, Amalia Nathansohn, who was 20 years younger and his third wife, were married by Rabbi Isaac Noah Mannheimer on 29 July 1855. They were struggling financially and living in a room, in a locksmiths house at Schlossergasse 117 when their son Sigmund was born. He was born with a caul, which his mother saw as an omen for the boys future. In 1859, the Freud family left Freiberg, Freuds half brothers emigrated to Manchester, England, parting him from the inseparable playmate of his early childhood, Emanuels son, John. Jakob Freud took his wife and two children firstly to Leipzig and then in 1860 to Vienna where four sisters and a brother were born, Rosa, Marie, Adolfine, Paula, in 1865, the nine-year-old Freud entered the Leopoldstädter Kommunal-Realgymnasium, a prominent high school. He proved an outstanding pupil and graduated from the Matura in 1873 with honors and he loved literature and was proficient in German, French, Italian, Spanish, English, Hebrew, Latin and Greek. Freud entered the University of Vienna at age 17, in 1876, Freud spent four weeks at Clauss zoological research station in Trieste, dissecting hundreds of eels in an inconclusive search for their male reproductive organs. He graduated with an MD in 1881, in 1882, Freud began his medical career at the Vienna General Hospital
27.
Wassily Kandinsky
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Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was a Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting one of the first recognised purely abstract works, born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa, where he graduated at Grekov Odessa Art school. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics, successful in his profession—he was offered a professorship at the University of Dorpat—Kandinsky began painting studies at the age of 30. In 1896 Kandinsky settled in Munich, studying first at Anton Ažbes private school and he returned to Moscow in 1914, after the outbreak of World War I. Kandinsky was unsympathetic to the theories on art in Communist Moscow. There, he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France, where he lived for the rest of his life, becoming a French citizen in 1939 and he died at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944. Kandinskys creation of work followed a long period of development. He called this devotion to beauty, fervor of spirit. Kandinsky was born in Moscow, the son of Lidia Ticheeva and Vasily Silvestrovich Kandinsky, Kandinsky learned from a variety of sources while in Moscow. He studied many fields while in school, including law and economics, later in life, he would recall being fascinated and stimulated by colour as a child. His fascination with colour symbolism and psychology continued as he grew, in 1889, he was part of an ethnographic research group which travelled to the Vologda region north of Moscow. In Looks on the Past, he relates that the houses and churches were decorated with such shimmering colours that upon entering them and this experience, and his study of the regions folk art, was reflected in much of his early work. The artist is the hand plays, touching one key or another. Kandinsky was also the uncle of Russian-French philosopher Alexandre Kojève, in 1896, at the age of 30, Kandinsky gave up a promising career teaching law and economics to enroll in the Munich Academy where his teachers would eventually include Franz von Stuck. He was not immediately granted admission, and began learning art on his own and that same year, before leaving Moscow, he saw an exhibit of paintings by Monet. He was particularly taken with the style of Haystacks, this. Later, he would write about this experience, That it was a haystack the catalogue informed me and this non-recognition was painful to me
28.
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
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Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is an art museum in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. It is located at the Museumpark in the district Rotterdam Centrum, close to the Kunsthal and it houses the collections of Frans Jacob Otto Boijmans and Daniël George van Beuningen. In the collection, ranging from medieval to contemporary art, are works of Rembrandt, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, in 2013, the museum had 292,711 visitors and was the 14th most visited museum in the Netherlands. The museum was established in 1849 as Museum Boymans with the collection of Frans Jacob Otto Boijmans, the painter and art dealer, Arie Johannes Lamme, was named the museums first Director. Much of the original collection was destroyed in a fire in 1864. The collection of businessman Daniël George van Beuningen was added in 1958, the spelling was changed to Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in 1996. The museum has a diverse collection ranging from medieval to contemporary art, much of the collection came to the museum through the two private collections mentioned above, but many others have contributed throughout the years. The collection also includes one of the richest assembly of works on paper in the world from the Middle Ages to the present times, aRTtube is a website with videos about art and design. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen produces, together with TV Rijnmond, a series on art. Boijmans TV is based on an idea by Wilfried de Jong, Boijmans TV is created by a team of creative specialists in different disciplines. It is more than an art magazine, apart from the artists, the visitor, the attendant. Each episode of Boijmans TV can be viewed on ArtTube after it has been broadcast, sjarel Ex has been the museum director since 2004. The museum had 292,711 visitors in 2013 and that year it was the most visited museum in Rotterdam and the 14th most visited museum in the Netherlands. It had an estimated 270,000 visitors in 2015, media related to Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen at Wikimedia Commons Official website
29.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
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He volunteered for army service in the First World War, but soon suffered a breakdown and was discharged. In 1933, his work was branded as degenerate by the Nazis and in 1937, in 1938, he committed suicide by gunshot. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was born in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria and his parents were of Prussian descent and his mother was a descendant of the Huguenots, a fact to which Kirchner often referred. The institution provided a range of studies in addition to architecture, such as freehand drawing, perspective drawing. While in attendance, he became friends with Fritz Bleyl. They discussed art together and also studied nature, having a radical outlook in common, Kirchner continued studies in Munich 1903–1904, returning to Dresden in 1905 to complete his degree. In 1905, Kirchner, along with Bleyl and two other students, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Erich Heckel, founded the artists group Die Brücke. From then on, he committed himself to art, the group aimed to eschew the prevalent traditional academic style and find a new mode of artistic expression, which would form a bridge between the past and the present. They responded both to past artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Matthias Grünewald and Lucas Cranach the Elder, as part of the affirmation of their national heritage, they revived older media, particularly woodcut prints. Their group was one of the ones which in due course had a major impact on the evolution of modern art in the 20th century. The group met initially in Kirchners first studio, which had previously been a butchers shop, Kirchners studio became a venue which overthrew social conventions to allow casual love-making and frequent nudity. Group life-drawing sessions took place using models from the circle, rather than professionals. A group manifesto written by Kirchner in 1906 stated that Everyone who reproduces, directly and without illusion, whatever he senses the urge to create, belongs to us. In September and October 1906, the first group exhibition was held, focused on the female nude, in 1906, he met Doris Große, who was his favoured model until 1911. Between 1907 and 1911, he stayed during the summer at the Moritzburg lakes and on the island of Fehmarn with other Brücke members, his work featured the female nude in natural settings. In 1911, he moved to Berlin, where he founded an art school, MIUM-Institut. This was not a success and closed the year, when he also began a relationship with Erna Schilling that lasted the rest of his life. In 1913, his writing of Chronik der Brücke led to the ending of the group, at this time, he established an individual identity with his first solo exhibition, which took place at the Essen Folkwang Museum
30.
German Expressionist
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German Expressionism refers to a number of related creative movements beginning in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin during the 1920s. These developments in Germany were part of a larger Expressionist movement in north and central European culture in such as architecture, dance, painting, sculpture. This article deals primarily with developments in German Expressionist cinema before, the German Expressionist movement was initially confined to Germany due to the isolation the country experienced during World War I. In 1916, the government had banned foreign films, the demand from theaters to generate films led to an increase in domestic film production from 24 films in 1914 to 130 films in 1918. With inflation also on the rise, Germans were attending films more freely because they knew that their moneys value was constantly diminishing, by the time the 1916 ban on imports was lifted, Germany had become a part of the international film industry. Various European cultures of the 1920s embraced an ethic of change, the plots and stories of the Expressionist films often dealt with madness, insanity, betrayal and other intellectual topics triggered by the experiences of World War I. Later films often categorized as part of the history of German Expressionism include Metropolis and M. This trend was a reaction against realism. Its practitioners used extreme distortions in expression to show an inner emotional reality rather than what is on the surface, the extreme anti-realism of Expressionism was short-lived, fading away after only a few years. However, the themes of Expressionism were integrated into films of the 1920s and 1930s, resulting in an artistic control over the placement of scenery, light. This dark, moody school of film making was brought to the United States when the Nazis gained power, Nazi film theorist Fritz Hippler though was a supporter of expressionism. Two further films produced in Nazi Germany using the expressionist style were “Das Stahltier” in 1935 by Willy Zielke, das Leben eines Titanen” in 1940 by Curt Oertel. Two genres that were influenced by Expressionism are horror film and film noir. Carl Laemmle and Universal Studios had made a name for themselves by producing such famous films of the silent era as Lon Chaneys The Phantom of the Opera. The German silent cinema was arguably far ahead of Hollywood during the same period, the cinema outside Germany benefited both from the emigration of German film makers and from German expressionist developments in style and technique that were apparent on the screen. The new look and techniques impressed other contemporary film makers, artists and cinematographers, in 1924, Alfred Hitchcock was sent by Gainsborough Pictures to work as an assistant director and art director at the UFA Babelsberg Studios in Berlin on the film The Blackguard. The immediate effect of the environment in Germany can be seen in his expressionistic set designs for that film. Hitchcock later said, I. acquired a strong German influence by working at the UFA studios Berlin, German expressionism would continue to influence Hitchcock throughout his career
31.
Der Blaue Reiter
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Der Blaue Reiter was a group of artists united in rejection of the Neue Künstlervereinigung München in Munich, Germany. They considered that the principles of the Neue Künstlervereinigung München, a group Kandinsky had founded in 1909, had become too strict, Der Blaue Reiter was an art movement lasting from 1911 to 1914, fundamental to Expressionism, along with Die Brücke which was founded in 1905. Der Blaue Reiter lacked an artistic manifesto, but it was centered on Kandinsky, Kandinsky wrote 20 years later that the name is derived from Marcs enthusiasm for horses and Kandinskys love of riders, combined with a shared love of the colour blue. For Kandinsky, blue is the colour of spirituality, the darker the blue, within the group, artistic approaches and aims varied from artist to artist, however, the artists shared a common desire to express spiritual truths through their art. They believed in the promotion of art, the connection between visual art and music, the spiritual and symbolic associations of colour, and a spontaneous. Members were interested in European medieval art and primitivism, as well as the contemporary, as a result of their encounters with cubist, fauvist and Rayonist ideas, they moved towards abstraction. Der Blaue Reiter organized exhibitions in 1911 and 1912 that toured Germany and they also published an almanac featuring contemporary, primitive and folk art, along with childrens paintings. In 1913 they exhibited in the first German Herbstsalon, the group was disrupted by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Franz Marc and August Macke were killed in combat, Wassily Kandinsky, Marianne von Werefkin and Alexej von Jawlensky were forced to move back to Russia because of their Russian citizenship. There were also differences in opinion within the group, as a result, Der Blaue Reiter was short-lived, lasting for only three years from 1911 to 1914. Supported by their dealer Galka Scheyer, Kandinsky, Feininger, Klee, together they exhibited and lectured together in the United States from 1924 on. An extensive collection of paintings by Der Blaue Reiter is exhibited in the Städtische Galerie in the Lenbachhaus in Munich. Conceived in June 1911, Der Blaue Reiter Almanach was published in early 1912, by Piper, Munich, in an edition of 1100 copies, on 11 May, Franz Marc received a first print. The volume was edited by Kandinsky and Marc, its costs were underwritten by the industrialist and art collector Bernhard Koehler and it contained reproductions of more than 140 artworks, and 14 major articles. A second volume was planned, but the start of World War I prevented it, instead, a second edition of the original was printed in 1914, again by Piper. The art reproduced in the Almanac marked a turn away from a Eurocentric. The five works by Van Gogh, Cézanne, and Gauguin were outnumbered by seven from Henri Rousseau and thirteen from child artists. From January 1912 through July 1914, the exhibition toured Europe with venues in Cologne, Berlin, Bremen, Hagen, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Budapest, Oslo, Helsinki, Trondheim and Göteborg
32.
Franz Marc
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Franz Marc was a German painter and printmaker, one of the key figures of the German Expressionist movement. He was a member of Der Blaue Reiter, a journal whose name later became synonymous with the circle of artists collaborating in it. Franz Marc was born in 1880 in Munich, then the capital of the Kingdom of Bavaria and his father, Wilhelm Marc, was a professional landscape painter, his mother, Sophie, was a homemaker and a devout, socially liberal Calvinist. In 1900 Marc began to study at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, in 1903 and 1907, he spent time in France, particularly in Paris, visiting the museums in the city and copying many paintings, a traditional way for artists to study and develop technique. In Paris, Marc frequented artistic circles, meeting numerous artists and he discovered a strong affinity for the work of painter Vincent van Gogh. In 1906, Marc traveled with his elder brother Paul, a Byzantine expert, to Thessaloniki, Mount Athos, a few years later, in 1910, Marc developed an important friendship with the artist August Macke. In 1910 Marc painted Nude with Cat and Grazing Horses, Marc showed several of his works in the first Der Blaue Reiter exhibition at the Thannhauser Galleries in Munich between December 1911 and January 1912. As it was the apex of the German expressionist movement, the exhibit also showed in Berlin, Cologne, Hagen and he painted The Tiger and Red Deer in 1912 and The Tower of Blue Horses, Foxes, and Fate of the Animals in 1913. With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Marc was drafted into the German Army as a cavalryman, by February 1916, as shown in a letter to his wife, he had gravitated to military camouflage. His technique for hiding artillery from aerial observation was to paint canvas covers in broadly pointillist style, after mobilization of the German Army, the government identified notable artists to be withdrawn from combat for their own safety. Marc was on the list but was struck in the head, Marc made some sixty prints in woodcut and lithography. Most of his mature work portrays animals, usually in natural settings and his work is characterized by bright primary color, an almost cubist portrayal of animals, stark simplicity and a profound sense of emotion. Even in his own time, his work attracted notice in influential circles. ”One of Marcs best-known paintings is Tierschicksale, Marc had completed the work in 1913, when the tension of impending cataclysm had pervaded society, as one art historian noted. On the rear of the canvas, Marc wrote, Und Alles Sein ist flammend Leid, serving in World War I, Marc wrote to his wife about the painting, is like a premonition of this war—horrible and shattering. I can hardly conceive that I painted it and his family house in Munich is marked with a historical plaque. In October 1998, several of Marcs paintings garnered record prices at Christies art auction house in London, including Rote Rehe I, in October 1999, his Der Wasserfall was sold by Sothebys in London to a private collector for $5. 06m. This price set a record for both Franz Marcs work, and twentieth-century German painting, during his twenties, Marc was involved in a number of stormy relationships, including an affair lasting for many years with Annette Von Eckardt, a married antique dealer nine years his senior. He married twice, first to Marie Schnür, then to Maria Franck, both were artists
33.
Paul Klee
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Paul Klee was a Swiss-German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included Expressionism, Cubism and he and his colleague, Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, both taught at the Bauhaus school of art, design and architecture. His works reflect his dry humor and his sometimes childlike perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality. First of all, the art of living, then as my ideal profession, poetry and philosophy, Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, as the second child of German music teacher Hans Wilhelm Klee and Swiss singer Ida Marie Klee, née Frick. His sister Mathilde was born on 28 January 1876 in Walzenhausen and their father came from Tann and studied at the Stuttgart Conservatory singing, piano, organ and violin, meeting there his future wife Ida Frick. Hans Wilhelm Klee was active as a teacher at the Bern State Seminary in Hofwil near Bern until 1931. Klee was able to develop his skills as his parents encouraged and inspired him until his death. In 1880, his family moved to Bern, where they moved 17 years later after numerous changes of residence into a house at the Kirchenfeld district. From 1886 to 1890, Klee visited primary school and received, at the age of 7 and he was so talented on violin that, aged 11, he received an invitation to play as an extraordinary member of the Bern Music Association. He stated, I didnt find the idea of going in for music creatively particularly attractive in view of the decline in the history of musical achievement. As a musician, he played and felt emotionally bound to traditional works of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, at sixteen, Klee’s landscape drawings already show considerable skill. Around 1897, Klee started his diary, which he kept until 1918, during his school years, he avidly drew in his school books, in particular drawing caricatures, and already demonstrating skill with line and volume. He barely passed his exams at the Gymnasium of Bern. With his characteristic dry wit, he wrote, After all, it’s rather difficult to achieve the exact minimum, and it involves risks. On his own time, in addition to his interests in music and art, Klee was a great reader of literature. With his parents reluctant permission, in 1898 Klee began studying art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with Heinrich Knirr and he excelled at drawing but seemed to lack any natural color sense. He later recalled, During the third winter I even realized that I probably would never learn to paint, during these times of youthful adventure, Klee spent much time in pubs and had affairs with lower class women and artists models. He had a son in 1900 who died several weeks after birth
34.
August Macke
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August Macke was one of the leading members of the German Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter. Like a true artist of his time, Macke knew how to integrate into his painting the elements of the avant-garde which most interested him, August Robert Ludwig Macke was born in Germany on 3 January 1887, in Meschede, Westphalia. Shortly after Augusts birth the family settled at Cologne, where Macke was educated at the Kreuzgymnasium and became a friend of Hans Thuar, in 1904 Mackes father died, and in that year Macke enrolled at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, under Adolf Maennchen. Thereafter Macke lived most of his life in Bonn, with the exception of a few periods spent at Lake Thun in Switzerland and various trips to Paris, Italy. In Paris, where he traveled for the first time in 1907, Macke saw the work of the Impressionists and his style was formed within the mode of French Impressionism and Post-impressionism and later went through a Fauve period. In 1909 he married Elisabeth Gerhardt, in 1910, through his friendship with Franz Marc, Macke met Kandinsky and for a while shared the non-objective aesthetic and the mystical and symbolic interests of Der Blaue Reiter. Mackes meeting with Robert Delaunay in Paris in 1912 was to be a sort of revelation for him, Delaunays chromatic Cubism, which Apollinaire had called Orphism, influenced Mackes art from that point onwards. His Shops Windows can be considered an interpretation of Delaunays Windows. August Mackes oeuvre can be considered as Expressionism, and also as part of Fauvism, the paintings concentrate primarily on expressing feelings and moods rather than reproducing objective reality, usually distorting colour and form. Mackes career was cut short by his death in the second month of the First World War at the front in Champagne, France. His final painting, Farewell, depicts the mood of gloom that settled after the outbreak of war and this was also the same year that he painted the famous painting, Türkisches Café in München. The August Macke Prize, was given the first time in 1959 by the districts Arnsberg, Brilon, Olpe and Meschede, the August-Macke-Haus is a museum dedicated to August Macke founded in 1991. It is located in Mackes former home in Bonn, where he lived from 1911 to 1914, at a 1997 Christies auction, Mackes The Couple at a Garden Table was sold for £2 million. Market in Tunis sold for £2.86 million in 2000, consigned by the estate of Ernst Beyeler, the artist’s In the Bazar was auctioned for £3.96 million – then four and a half times the high estimate – at Christies in 2011. August Macke und die rheinischen Expressionisten, August Macke und die fruhe Moderne in Europa Ursula Heiderich, August Macke Aquarelle Werkverzeichnis Anna Meseure, August Macke 1887-1914 G
35.
Adolf Hitler
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Adolf Hitler was a German politician who was the leader of the Nazi Party, Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and Führer of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945. As dictator of the German Reich, he initiated World War II in Europe with the invasion of Poland in September 1939 and was central to the Holocaust, Hitler was born in Austria, then part of Austria-Hungary, and raised near Linz. He moved to Germany in 1913 and was decorated during his service in the German Army in World War I and he joined the German Workers Party, the precursor of the NSDAP, in 1919 and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923 he attempted a coup in Munich to seize power, the failed coup resulted in Hitlers imprisonment, during which he dictated the first volume of his autobiography and political manifesto Mein Kampf. Hitler frequently denounced international capitalism and communism as being part of a Jewish conspiracy, by 1933, the Nazi Party was the largest elected party in the German Reichstag, which led to Hitlers appointment as Chancellor on 30 January 1933. Hitler aimed to eliminate Jews from Germany and establish a New Order to counter what he saw as the injustice of the post-World War I international order dominated by Britain, Hitler sought Lebensraum for the German people in Eastern Europe. His aggressive foreign policy is considered to be the cause of the outbreak of World War II in Europe. He directed large-scale rearmament and on 1 September 1939 invaded Poland, resulting in British, in June 1941, Hitler ordered an invasion of the Soviet Union. By the end of 1941 German forces and the European Axis powers occupied most of Europe, failure to defeat the Soviets and the entry of the United States into the war forced Germany onto the defensive and it suffered a series of escalating defeats. In the final days of the war, during the Battle of Berlin in 1945, Hitler married his long-time lover, on 30 April 1945, less than two days later, the two killed themselves to avoid capture by the Red Army, and their corpses were burned. Hitler and the Nazi regime were also responsible for the killing of an estimated 19.3 million civilians, in addition,29 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of military action in the European Theatre of World War II. The number of civilians killed during the Second World War was unprecedented in warfare, Hitlers father Alois Hitler Sr. was the illegitimate child of Maria Anna Schicklgruber. The baptismal register did not show the name of his father, in 1842, Johann Georg Hiedler married Aloiss mother Maria Anna. Alois was brought up in the family of Hiedlers brother, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, in 1876, Alois was legitimated and the baptismal register changed by a priest to register Johann Georg Hiedler as Aloiss father. Alois then assumed the surname Hitler, also spelled Hiedler, Hüttler, the Hitler surname is probably based on one who lives in a hut. Nazi official Hans Frank suggested that Aloiss mother had been employed as a housekeeper by a Jewish family in Graz, and that the familys 19-year-old son Leopold Frankenberger had fathered Alois. No Frankenberger was registered in Graz during that period, and no record has been produced of Leopold Frankenbergers existence, Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn, a town in Austria-Hungary, close to the border with the German Empire. He was one of six born to Alois Hitler and Klara Pölzl
36.
Egon Schiele
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Egon Schiele was an Austrian painter. A protégé of Gustav Klimt, Schiele was a figurative painter of the early 20th century. His work is noted for its intensity and its raw sexuality, the twisted body shapes and the expressive line that characterize Schieles paintings and drawings mark the artist as an early exponent of Expressionism. Schiele was born in 1890 in Tulln, Lower Austria, as a child, Schiele was fascinated by trains, and would spend many hours drawing them, to the point where his father felt obliged to destroy his sketchbooks. When he was 11 years old, Schiele moved to the city of Krems to attend secondary school. To those around him, Schiele was regarded as a strange child, shy and reserved, he did poorly at school except in athletics and drawing, and was usually in classes made up of younger pupils. When he was sixteen he took the twelve-year-old Gerti by train to Trieste without permission, when Schiele was 15 years old, his father died from syphilis, and he became a ward of his maternal uncle, Leopold Czihaczek, also a railway official. In 1906 Schiele applied at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna, where Gustav Klimt had once studied, within his first year there, Schiele was sent, at the insistence of several faculty members, to the more traditional Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna in 1906. In 1907, Schiele sought out Gustav Klimt, who generously mentored younger artists, Klimt took a particular interest in the young Schiele, buying his drawings, offering to exchange them for some of his own, arranging models for him and introducing him to potential patrons. He also introduced Schiele to the Wiener Werkstätte, the arts and crafts workshop connected with the Secession, in 1908 Schiele had his first exhibition, in Klosterneuburg. Schiele left the Academy in 1909, after completing his third year, Klimt invited Schiele to exhibit some of his work at the 1909 Vienna Kunstschau, where he encountered the work of Edvard Munch, Jan Toorop, and Vincent van Gogh among others. Once free of the constraints of the Academys conventions, Schiele began to not only the human form. At the time, many found the explicitness of his works disturbing, in 1913, the Galerie Hans Goltz, Munich, mounted Schieles first solo show. A solo exhibition of his took place in Paris in 1914. Schieles self-portraits helped re-establish the energy of both genres with their level of emotional and sexual honesty and use of figural distortion in place of conventional ideals of beauty. Egon Schiele’s Kneeling Nude with Raised Hands is considered among the most significant nude art pieces made during the 20th century, Schiele’s radical and developed approach towards the naked human form challenged both scholars and progressives alike. This unconventional piece and style went against strict academia and elevated a sexual uproar with its contorted lines, Schiele mastered the craft of contouring sexually charged beings to express emotional revolutions. In 1911, Schiele met the seventeen-year-old Walburga Neuzil, who lived with him in Vienna, very little is known of her, except that she had previously modelled for Gustav Klimt and might have been one of his mistresses
37.
Futurism
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Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized speed, technology, youth, and violence, and objects such as the car, the aeroplane, although it was largely an Italian phenomenon, there were parallel movements in Russia, England, Belgium and elsewhere. It glorified modernity and aimed to liberate Italy from the weight of its past, Cubism contributed to the formation of Italian Futurisms artistic style. Important Futurist works included Marinettis Manifesto of Futurism, Boccionis sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, to some extent Futurism influenced the art movements Art Deco, Constructivism, Surrealism, Dada, and to a greater degree Precisionism, Rayonism, and Vorticism. Futurism is a movement founded in Milan in 1909 by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. He was soon joined by the painters Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini, Marinetti expressed a passionate loathing of everything old, especially political and artistic tradition. We want no part of it, the past, he wrote, publishing manifestos was a feature of Futurism, and the Futurists wrote them on many topics, including painting, architecture, religion, clothing and cooking. The founding manifesto did not contain an artistic programme, which the Futurists attempted to create in their subsequent Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting. This committed them to a universal dynamism, which was to be represented in painting. The motor bus rushes into the houses which it passes, the Futurist painters were slow to develop a distinctive style and subject matter. In 1910 and 1911 they used the techniques of Divisionism, breaking light and color down into a field of stippled dots and stripes, which had been originally created by Giovanni Segantini and others. Later, Severini, who lived in Paris, attributed their backwardness in style and method at this time to their distance from Paris, the centre of avant-garde art. Severini was the first to come into contact with Cubism and following a visit to Paris in 1911 the Futurist painters adopted the methods of the Cubists, Cubism offered them a means of analysing energy in paintings and expressing dynamism. They often painted modern urban scenes, carràs Funeral of the Anarchist Galli is a large canvas representing events that the artist had himself been involved in, in 1904. The action of an attack and riot is rendered energetically with diagonals. His Leaving the Theatre uses a Divisionist technique to render isolated, Boccionis The City Rises represents scenes of construction and manual labour with a huge, rearing red horse in the centre foreground, which workmen struggle to control. The Futurists aimed through their art thus to enable the viewer to apprehend the inner being of what they depicted, Boccioni developed these ideas at length in his book, Pittura scultura Futuriste, Dinamismo plastico. Ballas Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash exemplifies the Futurists insistence that the world is in constant movement
38.
Vorticism
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Vorticism was a short-lived modernist movement in British art and poetry of the early 20th century, partly inspired by Cubism. Ultimately, it was their witnessing of unfolding human disaster in World War I that drained these artists of their Vorticist zeal, Vorticism was based in London but was international in make-up and ambition. Lewis himself saw Vorticism as an independent alternative to Cubism, Futurism and Expressionism, though the style grew out of Cubism, it is more closely related to Futurism in its embrace of dynamism, the machine age and all things modern. However, Vorticism diverged from Futurism in the way it tried to capture movement in an image, in a Vorticist painting modern life is shown as an array of bold lines and harsh colours drawing the viewers eye into the centre of the canvas. The Vorticists published two issues of the literary magazine BLAST, edited by Lewis, in June 1914 and July 1915 and it contained work by Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot as well as by the Vorticists themselves. Its typographical adventurousness was cited by El Lissitzky as one of the forerunners of the revolution in graphic design in the 1920s and 1930s. This work was contemporary with and comparable to abstraction by European artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, František Kupka, the Vorticists held only one exhibition, in 1915, at the Doré Gallery in London. The main section of the exhibition included work by Jessica Dismorr, Frederick Etchells, Lewis, Gaudier-Brzeska, William Roberts, Helen Saunders, there was a smaller section area titled Those Invited To Show that included several other artists. Jacob Epstein was notably not represented, although did have his drawings reproduced in BLAST, after this, the movement broke up, largely due to the onset of World War I and public apathy towards the work. Gaudier-Brzeska was killed in service, while leading figures such as Epstein distanced themselves stylistically from Lewis. A brief attempt by Lewis to revive the movement in 1920 under the name Group X proved unsuccessful, Pound, however, through his correspondence with Lewis, was understood to hold a commitment to the goals of the movement as much as forty years after its demise. A1956 exhibition at the Tate Gallery was called Wyndham Lewis and Vorticism and this angered other members of the group. Bomberg and Roberts both protested strongly the assertion of Lewis, which was printed in the catalogue, Vorticism, in fact, was what I, personally, did. Vorticism and Abstract Art in the First Machine Age, a Crisis of Brilliance, Five Young British Artists and the Great War. Vorticism in Fortnightly Review 96, no
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Cubism
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Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. Cubism has been considered the most influential art movement of the 20th century, the term is broadly used in association with a wide variety of art produced in Paris during the 1910s and extending through the 1920s. The movement was pioneered by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, joined by Andre Lhote, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, Henri Le Fauconnier, Fernand Léger and Juan Gris. A primary influence that led to Cubism was the representation of form in the late works of Paul Cézanne. The impact of Cubism was far-reaching and wide-ranging, Cubism spread rapidly across the globe and in doing so evolved to a greater or lesser extent. In essence, Cubism was the origin of a process that produced diversity. In France, offshoots of Cubism developed, including Orphism, Abstract art, in other countries Futurism, Suprematism, Dada, Constructivism, De Stijl and Art Deco developed in response to Cubism. Other common threads between these movements include the faceting or simplification of geometric forms, and the association of mechanization. Cubism began between 1907 and 1911, Pablo Picassos 1907 painting Les Demoiselles dAvignon has often been considered a proto-Cubist work. Georges Braques 1908 Houses at L’Estaque prompted the critic Louis Vauxcelles to refer to bizarreries cubiques, Gertrude Stein referred to landscapes made by Picasso in 1909, such as Reservoir at Horta de Ebro, as the first Cubist paintings. A second phase, Synthetic Cubism, remained vital until around 1919, english art historian Douglas Cooper proposed another scheme, describing three phases of Cubism in his book, The Cubist Epoch. Douglas Coopers restrictive use of terms to distinguish the work of Braque, Picasso, Gris. Alternative interpretations of Cubism have therefore developed, wider views of Cubism include artists who were later associated with the Salle 41 artists, e. g. John Berger identifies the essence of Cubism with the mechanical diagram. The metaphorical model of Cubism is the diagram, The diagram being a symbolic representation of invisible processes, forces, structures. A diagram need not eschew certain aspects of appearance but these too will be treated as not as imitations or recreations. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Europeans were discovering African, Polynesian, Micronesian, artists such as Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso were intrigued and inspired by the stark power and simplicity of styles of those foreign cultures. Around 1906, Picasso met Matisse through Gertrude Stein, at a time when artists had recently acquired an interest in primitivism, Iberian sculpture, African art and African tribal masks. Picassos paintings of 1907 have been characterized as Protocubism, as seen in Les Demoiselles dAvignon
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Surrealism
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Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for its visual artworks and writings. The aim was to resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream, leader André Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was, above all, a revolutionary movement. Surrealism developed out of the Dada activities during World War I, the word surrealist was coined by Guillaume Apollinaire and first appeared in the preface to his play Les Mamelles de Tirésias, which was written in 1903 and first performed in 1917. The Dadaists protested with anti-art gatherings, performances, writings and art works, after the war, when they returned to Paris, the Dada activities continued. Meeting the young writer Jacques Vaché, Breton felt that Vaché was the son of writer. He admired the young writers anti-social attitude and disdain for established artistic tradition, later Breton wrote, In literature, I was successively taken with Rimbaud, with Jarry, with Apollinaire, with Nouveau, with Lautréamont, but it is Jacques Vaché to whom I owe the most. Back in Paris, Breton joined in Dada activities and started the literary journal Littérature along with Louis Aragon and they began experimenting with automatic writing—spontaneously writing without censoring their thoughts—and published the writings, as well as accounts of dreams, in the magazine. Breton and Soupault delved deeper into automatism and wrote The Magnetic Fields, continuing to write, they came to believe that automatism was a better tactic for societal change than the Dada form of attack on prevailing values. They also looked to the Marxist dialectic and the work of such theorists as Walter Benjamin, freuds work with free association, dream analysis, and the unconscious was of utmost importance to the Surrealists in developing methods to liberate imagination. They embraced idiosyncrasy, while rejecting the idea of an underlying madness, as Salvador Dalí later proclaimed, There is only one difference between a madman and me. Beside the use of analysis, they emphasized that one could combine inside the same frame, elements not normally found together to produce illogical. The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be−the greater its emotional power, the group aimed to revolutionize human experience, in its personal, cultural, social, and political aspects. They wanted to people from false rationality, and restrictive customs. Breton proclaimed that the aim of Surrealism was long live the social revolution. To this goal, at various times Surrealists aligned with communism and anarchism, in 1924 two Surrealist factions declared their philosophy in two separate Surrealist Manifestos. That same year the Bureau of Surrealist Research was established, leading up to 1924, two rival surrealist groups had formed. Each group claimed to be successors of a revolution launched by Guillaume Apollinaire, the other group, led by Breton, included Louis Aragon, Robert Desnos, Paul Éluard, Jacques Baron, Jacques-André Boiffard, Jean Carrive, René Crevel and Georges Malkine, among others. Goll and Breton clashed openly, at one point literally fighting, at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées, in the end, Breton won the battle through tactical and numerical superiority
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Dada
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Dada or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centers in Zürich, Switzerland at the Cabaret Voltaire, in New York, and after 1920, in Paris. The art of the movement spanned visual, literary, and sound media, including collage, sound poetry, cut-up writing, Dadaist artists expressed their discontent with violence, war, and nationalism, and maintained political affinities with the radical left. Others note that it suggests the first words of a child, evoking a childishness, still others speculate that the word might have been chosen to evoke a similar meaning in any language, reflecting the movements internationalism. The roots of Dada lay in pre-war avant-garde, the term anti-art, a precursor to Dada, was coined by Marcel Duchamp around 1913 to characterize works which challenge accepted definitions of art. Cubism and the development of collage and abstract art would inform the movements detachment from the constraints of reality, the work of French poets, Italian Futurists and the German Expressionists would influence Dadas rejection of the tight correlation between words and meaning. Works such as Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry, and the ballet Parade by Erik Satie would also be characterized as proto-Dadaist works, the Dada movements principles were first collected in Hugo Balls Dada Manifesto in 1916. The movement influenced later styles like the avant-garde and downtown music movements, Dada was an informal international movement, with participants in Europe and North America. The beginnings of Dada correspond to the outbreak of World War I, avant-garde circles outside France knew of pre-war Parisian developments. Futurism developed in response to the work of various artists, many Dadaists believed that the reason and logic of bourgeois capitalist society had led people into war. They expressed their rejection of that ideology in artistic expression that appeared to reject logic and embrace chaos, for example, George Grosz later recalled that his Dadaist art was intended as a protest against this world of mutual destruction. According to Hans Richter Dada was not art, it was anti-art, Dada represented the opposite of everything which art stood for. Where art was concerned with aesthetics, Dada ignored aesthetics. If art was to appeal to sensibilities, Dada was intended to offend, as Hugo Ball expressed it, For us, art is not an end in itself. But it is an opportunity for the perception and criticism of the times we live in. A reviewer from the American Art News stated at the time that Dada philosophy is the sickest, most paralyzing and most destructive thing that has ever originated from the brain of man. Art historians have described Dada as being, in large part, a systematic work of destruction and demoralization. In the end it became nothing but an act of sacrilege, to quote Dona Budds The Language of Art Knowledge, Dada was born out of negative reaction to the horrors of the First World War. This international movement was begun by a group of artists and poets associated with the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich, Dada rejected reason and logic, prizing nonsense, irrationality and intuition
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Franz Kafka
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Franz Kafka was a Prague German-language novelist and short story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His best known works include Die Verwandlung, Der Process, the term Kafkaesque has entered the English language to describe situations like those in his writing. Kafka was born into a middle-class, German-speaking Jewish family in Prague and he trained as a lawyer, and after completing his legal education he was employed with an insurance company, forcing him to relegate writing to his spare time. Over the course of his life, Kafka wrote hundreds of letters to family and close friends, including his father, with whom he had a strained and he became engaged to several women but never married. He died in 1924 at the age of 40 from tuberculosis and his work went on to influence a vast range of writers, critics, artists, and philosophers during the 20th century. Kafka was born near the Old Town Square in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and his family were middle-class Ashkenazi Jews. His father, Hermann Kafka, was the child of Jakob Kafka, a shochet or ritual slaughterer in Osek. Hermann brought the Kafka family to Prague, after working as a travelling sales representative, he eventually became a fancy goods and clothing retailer who employed up to 15 people and used the image of a jackdaw as his business logo. Kafkas mother, Julie, was the daughter of Jakob Löwy, a retail merchant in Poděbrady. Hermann and Julie had six children, of whom Franz was the eldest, franzs two brothers, Georg and Heinrich, died in infancy before Franz was seven, his three sisters were Gabriele, Valerie and Ottilie. They all died during the Holocaust of World War II, Valli was deported to the Łódź Ghetto in Poland in 1942, but that is the last documentation of her. On business days, both parents were absent from the home, with Julie Kafka working as many as 12 hours each day helping to manage the family business, consequently, Kafkas childhood was somewhat lonely, and the children were reared largely by a series of governesses and servants. The dominating figure of Kafkas father had a significant influence on Kafkas writing, the Kafka family had a servant girl living with them in a cramped apartment. In November 1913 the family moved into an apartment, although Ellie. In early August 1914, just after World War I began, both Ellie and Valli also had children. Franz at age 31 moved into Vallis former apartment, quiet by contrast, from 1889 to 1893, Kafka attended the Deutsche Knabenschule German boys elementary school at the Masný trh/Fleischmarkt, now known as Masná Street. His Jewish education ended with his Bar Mitzvah celebration at the age of 13, Kafka never enjoyed attending the synagogue and went with his father only on four high holidays a year. German was the language of instruction, but Kafka also spoke and he studied the latter at the gymnasium for eight years, achieving good grades
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Gottfried Benn
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Gottfried Benn was a German poet and essayist. Gottfried Benn was born in a Lutheran country parsonage, a few hours from Berlin and he was educated in Sellin in the Neumark and Frankfurt an der Oder. To please his father, he studied theology at the University of Marburg, after being laid off as a military doctor in 1912, Benn turned to pathology, where he dissected over 200 bodies between October 1912 and November 1913 in Berlin. Many of his works reflect on his time as a pathologist. In the summer of 1912, Benn started a relationship with the Jewish poet Else Lasker-Schüler. In 1913 a second volume of poems came out, titled Sons, Benns poetry projects an introverted nihilism, that is, an existentialist outlook that views artistic expression as the only purposeful action. In his early poems Benn used his experience, often using medical terminology. After the outbreak of World War I he enlisted in 1914, Benn attended the trial and execution of Nurse Edith Cavell. He also worked as a physician in an army brothel, after the war, he returned to Berlin and practiced as a dermatologist and venereal disease specialist. During the 1920s he had a relationship with Jewish poet Else Lasker-Schüler who addressed love poems to him. This bond to her is the subject of the film Mein Herz-niemandem by Helma Sanders-Brahms and he hoped that National Socialism would exalt his aesthetics and that expressionism would become the official art of Germany, as Futurism had in Italy. Benn was elected to the section of the Prussian Academy in 1932. In May he defended the new regime in a radio broadcast and he later signed the Gelöbnis treuester Gefolgschaft, that is, the vow of most faithful allegiance to Adolf Hitler. The cultural policy of the new State didnt turn out the way he hoped, appalled by the Night of the Long Knives, Benn turned away from the Nazis. He decided to perform the form of emigration and joined the Wehrmacht in 1935. In May 1936 the SS magazine Das Schwarze Korps attacked his expressionist and experimental poetry as degenerate, Jewish, in 1938 the Reichsschrifttumskammer banned Benn from further writing. During World War II, Benn was posted to garrisons in eastern Germany where he wrote poems, after the war, his work was banned by the Allies because of his initial support for Hitler. In 1951 he was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize and he died of cancer in West Berlin in 1956, and was buried in Waldfriedhof Dahlem, Berlin
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