German Expressionism

Lady Gaga...Tim Burton's Batman...film noir...Liza Manelli...early science fiction movies. What do all of these have in common? The answer is a lot more than you might suspect and involves my favorite genre of art history.

The term German Expressionism denotes a specific type of modern German art that had its origins in the 1890s, most notably with Edvard Munch's Der Schrei  (The Scream). Munch took his own psychosis and inner trauma of the mind and made it visible through the abstracted, swirling, and harsh use of color and line. Another originator of German Expressionism could be said to be Egon Schiele, the Austrian contemporary of Gustav Klimt who also expressed his own emotional turmoil and troubled thoughts by creating contorted, often grotesque figures of himself and others.

Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893.

Egon Schiele, Self-Portrait, 

At the turn of the century, Europe was experiencing a host of changes, both good and bad, and some more revolutionary than others. Particularly of importance to Europeans was the changing tides of international relations, war, and politics, and the Expressionist artists that emerged in Germany in the 1910s held almost prophetic visions of future war, poverty, and strife. It was as if the artists of the two major German Expressionist groups, Die Brücke (The Bridge) and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) knew that war was coming. They could feel it in the air, an intuition so permeating that nearly the entirety of their collective oeuvre had an underlying sense of foreboding,  of violence, decay, and even unhealthy decadence. 

Emil Nolde (Die Bruecke), The Prophet, 1912.

Ernst Kirchner (Die Bruecke), Berlin Street Scene, 1913.

Franz Marc (Der Blaue Reiter), Fate of the Animals, 1913.

Wassily Kandinsky (Der Blaue Reiter), Composition VI, 1913.

As you can see, chief elements of German Expressionist style include sharp angles, stark contrasts of light and shadow, elongated or mutated proportions (especially in figures), and cacophonous dynamics and interplay of shapes.

Even as German Expressionism morphed into the lesser known Neue Sachlichkeit and Bauhaus movements (and later, Art Deco), its influence remained strong among a variety of art forms, especially film. The 1920s marked an era of German film-making that surpassed all other film at the time. The most famous actors and directors were German, and the majority of them starred and directed films that were inherently Expressionist in their themes and style. Dark tales of class differences, insanity, and monsters (both human and non) abounded, combined with the eerie and overtly symbolic imagery of much of the Expressionist art of the previous decade. Many of these films were science fiction in genre, and if they weren't, they certainly held elements of the fantastic, the surreal, and the dark. Chief among them included F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922), Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), and 1927's epic Metropolis, directed by the "master of darkness" himself, Fritz Lang. Check those links for the full movies!

Nosferatu

Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Metropolis

Metropolis

(as an aside, be sure to watch Metropolis if you haven't. not only is it a classic, but it's full of a ridiculous amount of symbolism, from the occult, to Masonic, to creepily accurate predictions of the future. an interesting fact: they used mirrors to make normal-sized actors look small enough to go with the miniature sets they built of the city. Mirrors!)

Many of the films produced in this golden era of German film had actual Expressionist painters on hand for the creative process, set design, and costuming, and so the style of the films melded closely with the visual art of the 1910s, both in aesthetic style and symbolic themes. In the next few decades, German Expressionist film would give birth to film noir, especially the work of Hitchcock, whose films retained the dark visual style of Expressionism, as well as it's dark themes and twists. Hitchcock was particularly inspired by Expressionism thanks to his work as set designer on some Hollywood-produced Expressionist films. F.W. Murnau's The Last Laugh was especially influential (if you are interested in Expressionist cinema and its far-reaching ramifications, Sigfried Kracauer's From Caligari to Hitler is an excellent book, as is Lotte Eisner's The Haunted Screen).

Top: Suspicion (Hitchcock), Bottom: Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton)

The dark decadence of Expressionism was abandoned for obvious reasons in the post-War years, but saw a re-emergence in the form of 80s science fiction, particularly Tim Burton's Batman and Batman Returns, and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (the latter of which even draws inspiration from the fashions of the Expressionist era: Pris looks like a cabaret dancer, and Rachael dresses and does her hair similar to a German lady of the 30s). Drawing on both the visual and thematic elements of their early film and painting ancestors, the films paved the way for a new popularity of the style. Dark City is another good example of the style being used in more contemporary times.

Tim Burton's Batman (1989)

Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982)

Jumping back just a tad to 1972, I want to touch on the Oscar-winning movie-version of Cabaret featuring Liza Minnelli. Re-watch this classic and you may notice that it takes place in the early 1930s, Berlin. Expressionist touches are visible all throughout the film, not only in the stage sets and performances of the titular cabaret show, but also in the cinematography of the film itself: the lighting, the set placement, and the angles, especially. Of particular note is the wonderful tableau vivant of one of the most famous Expressionist portraits of the 1920s, Otto Dix's Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden.

Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles in the 1972 film adaptation of the hit musical. 

The tableau vivant in the film, compared to the original painting.

There is another reason why I bring up Cabaret as an example of Expressionist traits:

No one who has watched both Cabaret and Lady Gaga's bizarre "Alejandro" music video could miss the similarities and obvious references to cabaret performances, but what you may have missed the first time around are the elements, once again both visual and thematic, of earlier German Expressionist films such as Metropolis and Caligari. Gaga wears sci-fi-influenced costumes that would seem perfectly at home in the world of Metropolis, and she uses strong aesthetic traits of both the Expressionist films and the art of the Die Brucke and Der Blaue Reiter artists, as well as making blatant references to the German military. The video is a big nod to German culture of the first half of the century.

The ways in which German Expressionism was an artistic genre that overlapped into film, music, and literature (the last of which I don't have time to cover here, but if you're curious, just pick up anything by the quintessential writer of the Expressionist style: Franz Kafka) are half of what fascinates me about the style. It is unique in that it came to existence just as film was gaining strength, and therefore its influences can be found throughout film-making, but also in other various forms, due to the era's growth in communications and international relations. No other art historical genre has really had such overarching reach in the modern era.

Now that you've gotten a little primer on German Expressionism, keep en eye out for its influence! Can you think of any other particularly Expressionist-inspired things?