ART SUNDAY - RICHARD GERSTL

“It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.” - Friedrich Nietzsche  

Richard Gerstl (14 September 1883 – 4 November 1908) was an Austrian painter and draughtsman known for his expressive psychologically insightful portraits, his lack of critical acclaim during his lifetime, and his affair with the wife of Arnold Schoenberg which led to his suicide.

Richard Gerstl was born in a prosperous bourgeois family, Emil Gerstl, a Jewish merchant, and Maria Pfeiffer, non-Jewish woman. Early in his life, Gerstl decided to become an artist, much to the dismay of his father. After performing poorly in school and being forced to leave the famed Piaristengymnasium in Vienna as a result of “disciplinary difficulties”, his financially stable parents provided him with private tutors.

In 1898, at the age of fifteen, Gerstl was accepted into the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where he studied under the notoriously opinionated and difficult Christian Griepenkerl. Gerstl began to reject the style of the Vienna Secession and what he felt was pretentious art. This eventually prompted his vocal professor to proclaim, “The way you paint, I piss in the snow!” Frustrated with the lack of acceptance of his non-secessionist painting style, Gerstl continued to paint without any formal guidance for two years.

During the summers of 1900 and 1901, Gerstl studied under the guidance of Simon Hollósy in Nagybánya. Inspired by the more liberal leanings of Heinrich Lefler, Gerstl once again attempted formal education. Unfortunately, his refusal to participate in a procession in honour of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria further ostracised him and led to his departure. Gerstl felt that taking part in such an event was “unworthy of an artist”. His final exit from Lefler’s studio took place in 1908.

In 1904 and 1905, Gerstl shared a studio with his former academy classmate and friend, Viktor Hammer. Although Hammer had assisted in Gerstl’s admittance to Lefler’s tutelage and their relationship was friendly, it is difficult to determine how close the two men were as Gerstl did not associate with other artists. Regardless of their personal feelings, by 1906, Gerstl had acquired his own studio.

Although Gerstl did not associate with other artists, he did feel drawn to the musically inclined; he himself frequented concerts in Vienna. Around 1907, he began to associate with composers Arnold Schoenberg and Alexander von Zemlinsky, who lived in the same building at the time. Gerstl and Schoenberg developed a mutual admiration based upon their individual talents. Gerstl apparently instructed Schoenberg in art.

During this time, Gerstl moved into a flat in the same house and painted several portraits of Schoenberg, his family, and his friends. These portraits also included paintings of Schoenberg’s wife Mathilde, Alban Berg and Zemlinsky. His highly stylised heads anticipated German expressionism and used pastels as in the works by Oskar Kokoschka. Gerstl and Mathilde became extremely close and, in the summer of 1908, she left her husband and children to travel to Vienna with Gerstl. Schoenberg was in the midst of composing his Second String Quartet, which he dedicated to her.

Mathilde rejoined her husband in October. Distraught by the loss of Mathilde, his isolation from his associates, and his lack of artistic acceptance, Gerstl entered his studio during the night of 4 November 1908 and apparently burned every letter and piece of paper he could find. Although many paintings survived the fire, it is believed that a great deal of his artwork as well as personal papers and letters were destroyed. Other than his paintings, only eight drawings are known to have survived unscathed.

Following the burning of his papers, Gerstl hanged himself in front of the studio mirror and somehow managed to stab himself as well. The incident had a significant impact on Arnold Schoenberg and his opera ‘Die Glückliche Hand’ is based on these events. After his suicide at the age of twenty-five, his family took the surviving paintings out of Gerstl’s studio and stored them in a warehouse until his brother Alois showed them to the art dealer Otto Kallir in 1930 or 1931.

Although Gerstl had never managed to mount an exhibition of his works during his lifetime, Kallir organised one at his Neue Galerie. Shortly afterward, the Nazi presence in Austria hindered the further acclaim of the artist and it was not until after the war that Gerstl became known in the United States. Sixty-six paintings and eight drawings attributed to Gerstl are known, although it is possible he destroyed many more or that others could have been lost over the years.

The painting above is a detail of a portrait of Arnold Schoenberg from 1905.

ART SUNDAY - MARIANNE VON WEREFKIN

“Women’s liberation is the liberation of the feminine in the man and the masculine in the woman.” – Corita Kent

Marianne von Werefkin (Russian: Мариа́нна Влади́мировна Верёвкина; 10 September [O.S. 29 August] 1860, Tula, Russia – 6 February 1938, Ascona, Switzerland), born Marianna Wladimirowna Werewkina (transliteration Marianna Vladimirovna Verëvkina), was a Russian-German-Swiss Expressionist painter.

Marianne von Werefkin was born in the Russian town of Tula as the daughter of the commander of the Ekaterinaburg Regiment. She had her first private academic drawing lessons at the age of fourteen. In 1880, she became a student of Ilya Repin, the most important painter of Russian Realism. Her progress was dealt a setback by a hunting accident in 1888 in which she accidentally shot her right hand, which remained crippled after a lengthy period of recovery.

By practicing persistently she finally managed to use drawing and painting instruments with her right hand again. In 1892 she met Alexej von Jawlensky, who desired to be her protégé, and in 1896 she, Jawlensky, and their servant moved to Munich. For the sake of Jawlensky’s painting, Werefkin interrupted her painting for almost ten years. She initiated a Salon in Munich which soon became a centre of lively artistic exchange. She also founded the “Lukasbruderschaft” of which also Kandinsky was a member.

She began painting again in 1906. In 1907 she created her first expressionist works; in these she followed Paul Gauguin’s and Louis Anquetin’s style of “surface painting”, while also showing the influence of Edvard Munch. She and Jawlensky spent in 1908 several periods working with Kandinsky and Münter after their discovery of the picturesque rural town of Murnau near Munich, where Gabriele Münter owned a house. The four artists frequently painted together in open air in and around Murnau.

They founded a new artist-group in 1909, the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (New Association of Artists in Munich, NKVM). It became a forum of exhibitions and programming. After a few years Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc distanced themselves from this group and formed the Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider). The group was founded by a number of Russian emigrants, including Wassily Kandinsky, Alexej von Jawlensky and a number of native German artists, such as Franz Marc, August Macke and Gabriele Münter. Werefkin began exhibiting together with this group in 1913.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Werefkin and Jawlensky immigrated to Switzerland, near Geneva. They later moved to Zurich. By 1918, they had separated, and Werefkin moved alone to Ascona, on Lago Maggiore where she painted many colourful, landscapes in an expressionist style. In 1924 she founded the artist group “Großer Bär” (i.e., Big Bear, Ursa Major). In her later years, she painted posters. Her friends “Carmen” and “Diego Hagmann” protected her from poverty. Marianne von Werefkin died in Ascona on 6 February 1938. She was buried in the Russian graveyard in Ascona.

The painting above is her “Skaters” of 1911. She painted an almost identical tableau in the same year, but that one is more cluttered and busy, so I prefer the simpler one above. The dark figures of the skaters under moonlight resemble an unearthly dance of spirits away from the comfort and security of the brightly lit abode of humans in the background, right.

ART SUNDAY - PAUL KLEE

“A line is a dot that went for a walk.” - Paul Klee

Paul Klee, (born Dec. 18, 1879, Münchenbuchsee, near Bern, Switz.—died June 29, 1940, Muralto, near Locarno) Swiss painter who was one of the foremost artists of the 20th century. Klee participated in and was influenced by a range of artistic movements, including surrealism, cubism and expressionism. He taught art in Germany until 1933, when the National Socialists declared his work indecent. The Klee family fled to Switzerland, where Paul Klee died.

Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, on December 18, 1879. The son of a music teacher, Klee was a talented violinist, receiving an invitation to play with the Bern Music Association at age 11. As a teenager, Klee’s attention turned from music to the visual arts. In 1898, he began studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. By 1905, he had developed signature techniques, including drawing with a needle on a blackened pane of glass. Between 1903 and 1905, he completed a set of etchings called Inventions that would be his first exhibited works.

In 1906, Klee married Bavarian pianist Lily Stumpf. The couple had a son, Felix Paul. Klee’s artwork progressed slowly for the next five years. In 1910, he had his first solo exhibition in Bern, which subsequently travelled to three Swiss cities. In January 1911, Klee met art critic Alfred Kubin, who introduced him to artists and critics. That winter, Klee joined the editorial team of the journal Der Blaue Reiter, co-founded by Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky. He began working on colour experiments in watercolours and landscapes, including the painting “In the Quarry”. Klee’s artistic breakthrough came in 1914, after a trip to Tunisia. Inspired by the light in Tunis, Klee began to delve into abstract art. Returning to Munich, Klee painted his first pure abstract, “In the Style of Kairouan”, composed of coloured rectangles and circles.

Klee’s work evolved during World War I, particularly following the deaths of his friends Auguste Macke and Franz Marc. Klee created several pen-and-ink lithographs, including “Death for the Idea”, in reaction to this loss. In 1916, he joined the German army, painting camouflage on airplanes and working as a clerk. By 1917, art critics began to classify Klee as one of the best young German artists. A three-year contract with dealer Hans Goltz brought exposure as well as commercial success.

Klee taught at the Bauhaus from 1921 to 1931, alongside his friend Kandinsky. In 1923, Kandinsky and Klee formed the Blue Four with two other artists, Alexej von Jawlensky and Lyonel Feininger, and toured the United States to lecture and exhibit work. Klee had his first exhibits in Paris around this time, finding favour with the French surrealists. Klee began teaching at Dusseldorf Academy in 1931. Two years later, he was fired under Nazi rule. The Klee family moved to Switzerland in late 1933. Klee was at the peak of his creative output during this tumultuous period. He produced nearly 500 works in a single year and created “Ad Parnassum”, widely considered to be his masterpiece.

Two years after returning to Switzerland, Klee fell ill with a disease that would later be diagnosed as progressive scleroderma, an autoimmune disease that hardens the skin and other organs. The artist created only 25 works the year after he fell ill, but his creativity resurged in 1937 and increased to a record 1,253 works in 1939. His late works dealt with the grief, pain, resilience, and acceptance of approaching death. Several of Klee’s works were included in the “Degenerate Art” exhibition staged by the National Socialists in Munich in 1937. The accusations against Klee's character and politics that had been waged against him in Germany complicated his application for Swiss citizenship in 1939. While he had been born in Switzerland, his father was German, which according to Swiss law meant that Klee was a German citizen. Klee died on June 29, 1940 in Locarno, Switzerland, before his final application could be approved.

Klee’s artistic legacy has been immense, even if many of his successors have not referenced his work openly as an apparent source or influence. During his lifetime, the Surrealists found Klee’s seemingly random juxtaposition of text, abstract signs, and reductive symbols suggestive of the way the mind in dream state recombines disparate objects of everyday and thus brings forth new insights into how the unconscious wields power even over waking reality.

In European art after the 1940s, artists such as Jean Dubuffet continued to reference the art of children as a kind of untutored, expressive ideal. Klee’s reputation grew considerably in the 1950s, by which time, for instance, the Abstract Expressionists could view his work in New York exhibitions. Klee's use of signs and symbols particularly interested the artists of the New York School, especially those interested in mythology, the unconscious, and primitivism (as well as the art of the self-trained and that of children). Klee’s use of colour as an expressive medium of human emotion in its own right also appealed to the Colour Field painters, such as Jules Olitski and Helen Frankenthaler. Finally, American artists maturing in the 1960s and 1970s, such as Ellsworth Kelly owed a debt to Klee for his pioneering colour theory during the Bauhaus period.

The painting above is “City and Sun” of 1928, which is a work characteristic of the artist. Geometric and strongly delineated, with carefully applied colour and almost reduced to an abstract image, the painting still manages to be representational with the title of the work being quote agreeable to the viewer.  On the one hand, Klee conceives an image that is an expression of his inner landscape, while on the other also showing a rather free form and playfulness typical of Klee’s style. Warm and cool colours, square shapes and solar rondel, resolve in a balanced and harmonious composition that is reminiscent of dream and fantasy.

ART SUNDAY - EMIL NOLDE

“Religion doesn’t make people bigots. People are bigots and they use religion to justify their ideology.” - Reza Aslan

Emil Nolde, original name Emil Hansen (born Aug. 7, 1867, Nolde, near Bocholt, Ger.—died April 15, 1956, Seebüll, near Niebüll, W.Ger.) was a German Expressionist painter, printmaker, and watercolourist known for his violent religious works and his foreboding landscapes. Born of a peasant family, the youthful Nolde made his living as a wood-carver. He was able to study art formally only when some of his early works were reproduced and sold as postcards. In Paris, Nolde began to paint works that bear a superficial affinity to Impressionistic painting. In 1906 he was invited to join Die Brücke, an association of Dresden-based Expressionist artists who admired his “storm of colour.” But Nolde, a solitary and intuitive painter, dissociated himself from that tightly knit group after a year and a half.

Fervently religious and racked by a sense of sin, Nolde created such works as “Dance Around the Golden Calf” (1910) and “In the Port of Alexandria” from the series depicting “The Legend of St. Maria Aegyptica” (1912), in which the erotic frenzy of the figures and the demonic, mask-like faces are rendered with deliberately crude draughtsmanship and dissonant colours. In the “Doubting Thomas” from the nine-part polyptych “The Life ofChrist” (1911–12), the relief of Nolde’s own religious doubts may be seen in the quiet awe of St. Thomas as he is confronted with Jesus’ wounds.

During 1913 and 1914 Nolde was a member of an ethnological expedition that reached the East Indies. There he was impressed with the power of unsophisticated belief, as is evident in his lithograph “Dancer” (1913). Back in Europe, Nolde led an increasingly reclusive life on the Baltic coast of Germany. His almost mystical affinity for the brooding terrain led to such works as his “Marsh Landscape” (1916), in which the low horizon, dominated by dark clouds, creates a majestic sense of space.

Landscapes done after 1916 were generally of a cooler tonality than his early works. But his masterful realisations of flowers retain the brilliant colours of his earlier works. He was a prolific graphic artist especially noted for the stark black-and-white effect that he employed in crudely incised woodcuts. Nolde was an early advocate of Germany’s National Socialist Party, but, when the Nazis came to power, they declared his work “decadent” and forbade him to paint. After World War II he resumed painting but often merely reworked older themes. His last “Self-portrait” (1947) retains his vigorous brushwork but reveals the disillusioned withdrawal of the artist in his 80th year.

The painting above is the “Familienbild” (Family Portrait) of 1947. A tightly knit composition reflects the theme of the work and the colours are bright and bold, but still associated with each member of the group: The child bright and golden full of sunny future hopes. The father in olives, oranges and browns, has an aura of peace, despite that dark brooding look. The mother multi-coloured but the striking blue in face and clothing perhaps symbolic of depth and stability, trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith and truth.

ART SUNDAY - ELISE BLUMANN

“The huge problem in our society is the enormous ignorance of the ideas that underlie modern art.” - Thom Mayne

Elise Blumann (16 January 1897 Parchim, Germany – 29 January 1990, Nedlands, Western Australia) was a German born artist who achieved recognition as an Australian Expressionist painter. Blumann studied at the Royal Art School in Berlin between 1917 and 1919, whilst also maintaining friendships and associations with artists at the Academy of Arts (the former Prussian Academy) - notably, Blumann recounted sitting for a portrait for artist Max Liebermann and also described his teaching methods although no verifiable evidence is available to confirm Liebermann as her tutor.

After this, Blumann taught in various schools in Germany from 1920 to 1923, when she married Arnold Blumann. She fled Nazi Germany with her husband in 1934, arriving at the port of Fremantle, Western Australia on the passenger liner Ormonde on January 4, 1938. In the decade following her arrival in Western Australia, Blumann produced a significant body of painting, taking as her subject the Western Australian landscape, her family and her new circle of friends. These works investigate the unique light and colour of the Western Australian landscape in a style informed by her knowledge of German Expressionism. Among these were “Summer Nude”, 1939, which in caused a scandal when exhibited in Western Australia in 1944 due to both its depiction of nudity and its bold, simple shapes and lines.

With the then Curator of the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Robert Campbell, she helped found the Art Group, a discussion group through which she promoted modernist ideas and attitudes in art and art education. However, in the 1950s Blumann became disillusioned with the possibilities of art in Western Australia and only painted sporadically. Her work first received national attention in the late 1970s some fifteen years before she died in 1990, aged 93. She has since been acknowledged as a significant contributor to Australian modernist painting, prefiguring the development of the similarly landscape-based modernism in Western Australia associated with painters Guy Grey-Smith and Howard Taylor.

Blumann remained faithful to the modernity of her vision in creating portraits, figurative studies and many paintings of her beloved West Australian landscape. She believed while painting in Perth that a fresh light should shine into the gloom of European-style classical landscapes and the arts and crafts movement that characterised Perth’s cultural scene at the time. Blumann’s many memorable images of her adopted landscape show no signs of homesickness, but rather hint at a great affection that grew over time. “Only slowly can one draw close to the Australian landscape,” she wrote, “at the beginning it seems not all that absolutely different but the longer one lives with it, the more one recognises how opposite everything is to Europe.”

The painting above is "Riverside Melaleuca" of 1948.

ART SUNDAY - JAMES ENSOR

“My art tends toward the literary. My pictures tend toward the outskirts of painting: But why generalise? It is possible to realise one thing or another, according to the impressions gained from one point of view or another. But it is too difficult to make a general rule.” – James Ensor

James Sidney Edouard, Baron Ensor (13 April 1860 – 19 November 1949) 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.

Ensor’s father, James Frederic Ensor, born in Brussels of English parents, was a cultivated man who studied engineering in England and Germany. Ensor’s 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, where one of his fellow students was Fernand Khnopff. Ensor first exhibited his work in 1881. From 1880 until 1917, he had his studio in the attic of his parents’ house. 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.

Ensor was an acknowledged master by the time he was 20 years old. After a youthful infatuation with the art of Rembrandt and Peter Paul Rubens, he adopted the vivacious brushstroke of the French Impressionists. When Ensor’s works were rejected by the Brussels Salon in 1883, he joined a group of progressive artists called Les Vingt ( Les XX, The Twenty). During this period, in such works as his “Scandalised Masks” (1883), he began to depict images of grotesque fantasy—skeletons, phantoms, and hideous masks. Ensor’s interest in masks probably began in his mother’s curio shop.

His “Entry of Christ into Brussels” (1888), filled with carnival masks painted in smeared, garish colours, provoked such indignation that he was expelled from Les Vingt. Ensor, nevertheless, continued to paint such nightmarish visions as “Masks (Intrigues)” (1890) and “Skeletons Fighting for the Body of a Hanged Man” (1891).

As criticism of his work became more abusive, the artist became more cynical and misanthropic, a state of mind given frightening expression in his “Portrait of the Artist Surrounded by Masks”. He finally became a recluse and was seen in public so seldom that he was rumoured to be dead. After 1900 Ensor’s art underwent little change. When, in 1929, his Entry of Christ into Brussels was first exhibited publicly, King Albert of Belgium conferred a baronetcy on him.

As Ensor achieved belated recognition in the final years of the 19th century, his style softened and he painted less. Critics have generally seen Ensor’s last fifty years as a long period of decline. The aggressive sarcasm and scatology that had characterised his work since the mid-1880s was less evident in his few new compositions, and much of his output consisted of mild repetitions of earlier works. Significant works of Ensor’s late period include “The Artist’s Mother in Death” (1915), a subdued painting of his mother’s deathbed with prominent medicine bottles in the foreground, and “The Vile Vivisectors” (1925), a vehement attack on those responsible for the use of animals in medical experimentation.

James Ensor is considered to be an innovator in 19th-century art. Although he stood apart from other artists of his time, he significantly influenced such 20th-century artists as Paul Klee, Emil Nolde, George Grosz, Alfred Kubin, Wols, Felix Nussbaum, and other expressionist and surrealist painters of the 20th century. The yearly philanthropic “Bal du Rat Mort” (Dead Rat Ball) in Ostend continues a tradition begun by Ensor and his friends in 1898.

His works are in many public collections, notably the Modern Art Museum of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, and the Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Ostend. Major works by Ensor are also in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, and the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne. A collection of his letters is held in the Contemporary Art Archives of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels. The Ensor collections of the Flemish fine art museums can all be seen at the James Ensor Online Museum (http://jamesensor.vlaamsekunstcollectie.be/).

The painting above is Ensor’s “The Despair of Pierrot” of 1892 and is typical of his oeuvre. The Commedia Dell’ Arte characters Pierrot, Columbine and Harlequin typify the eternal triangle of relationships, and Ensor’s obsession with masks can be allowed to vent in this thematic wonderland. The central jealous and despairing Pierrot is depicted in his blackest misery while Columbine and Harlequin are jauntily making their escape towards the windmill in the upper left. The masked figures around Pierrot seem to be deriding him and mocking his despair. It is a powerful image and one which creates unease, anxiety and disquietude. The blues and browns of the palette complement and contrast one another and contribute to the psychological effect of the painting.

MOVIE MONDAY - NOSFERATU

“Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.” - Blaise Pascal

For Movie Monday today I am considering a movie that we saw at the weekend, “Nosferatu: The Vampyre” by Werner Herzog (1979).

This is a famous film and is a remake of an equally famous silent expressionistic classic also from Germany, FW Murnau’s “Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horrors” of 1922. Both of these movies are based on the famous 1897 Gothic novel “Dracula” by Bram Stoker (which is available in its entirety online).  Stoker’s “Dracula” remains one of the most popular novels ever published and Dracula has been adapted for the stage and screen hundreds of times. It is a typical Victorian Gothic novel of a bloodthirsty vampire whose nocturnal activities are a metaphor for the hidden salaciousness and immorality of a supremely moralistic age. Bram Stoker wrote seventeen novels, but “Dracula” remains his most famous and enduring work.

The German film-maker, FW Murnau wanted to make a film version of “Dracula” but was denied the rights to the book by Stoker’s estate. Murnau proceeded to change the title to “Nosferatu”, the name of Dracula to “Count Orlok”, and then he proceeded to make a classic of the silent film era. It is a prime example of German film expressionism but at the same time a faithful adaptation of Stoker’s story. The film has images that are haunting and horrible, lingering and lugubrious, unsettling and uncanny. Considering when the film was made, even today it is quite disturbing and amazingly effective in the horror genre. I watched this film some time ago in my University years and one can now watch it in its entirety on YouTube.

Werner Herzog in the late 70s reimagined Murnau’s “Nosferatu”, remaining quite faithful to the original version and trying to capture as much as possible the atmosphere of Murnau’s masterpiece, utilising modern technology, equipment, colour film stock and sound. He uses Murnau’s vision and extends it in a logical fashion, attempting to fill in the lacunae of the original. It is not a remake, shot for shot, nor does mimic artistically the original. Herzog was too great a director to slavishly ape his predecessor. He is inspired by Murnau and he creates a beautifully haunting film where even the character of the vampire changes and he becomes strangely sympathetic to us. The vampire is trapped by circumstances in an undead state he loathes (and which he continues to live, by compulsion of fate) and he often meditates on his inability to die and also his yearning for love, the blood-lust being a poor substitute for it.

In case you are not familiar with the plot (which planet are you from?) here it is in a nutshell: Jonathan Harker, an estate agent’s representative is sent to Count Dracula’s castle to negotiate the sale of a house in Wismar, where he lives. Count Dracula is a vampire, one of the undead ghouls who needs human blood to remain alive. Seeing a photograph of Lucy Harker, Jonathan’s wife, Dracula decides to move to Wismar, bringing with him rats, plague and death.

The film has a certain theatricality about it and in certain scenes resembles a patchwork of tableaux-vivants – a stroll through the chamber of horrors of Madame Tussaud. In other scenes, there is a glowing misty light that mimics Vermeer’s paintings. Isabelle Adjani is a beautifully cool Lucy and her acting is rather formalised and detached. Klaus Kinski as the Count is magnificent and his caricature-like face and hands do not detract from the look of the film. Jonathan’s part played by Bruno Ganz is adequate and his rather prissy, narcissistic, ineffectual anti-hero comes across well. The locations are beautiful and brought back memories of my time in Delft, Holland. There is a chilling foreboding throughout the film and suits very well several subtext messages that Herzog is conveying to us.

Watch if you can the German-speaking version with subtitles, rather than the English-speaking version (the film was shot twice) as the acting is better in the German version. Both original version and Herzog’s recent one are definitely worth seeing.

ART SUNDAY - CHAÏM SOUTINE

“Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.” - Henry Ward Beecher

Chaïm Soutine (1893-1943) was born in Russia and brought up in a Lithuanian Jewish ghetto where he encountered community opposition for his propensity for drawing images, which contravened Talmudic law. He arrived in Paris in 1913, where he initially lived in desperate poverty. In 1915 he met Modigliani, with whom he developed a close friendship. His work was tenuously connected with the Parisian mainstream, but has a recognisable debt to Fauvism and Expressionism. Although his financial condition improved suddenly after 1923 through growing patronage, he continued to produce disturbing works in which extremely distorted images were painted with intensely heightened colours. His “Arbre Couché” (above), painted during 1923-4 is representative of this period.

Soutine’s life had changed radically after the American collector, Dr. Albert C. Barnes, bought many of his canvases in 1923. Having previously known poverty, Soutine now enjoyed a comfortable life and could stay at luxury hotels and spas. At Châtelguyon, Puy-de-Dôme, where he often went to take waters with his friends and patrons Marcellin and Madeline Castaing, he observed the staff and painted the well-known series of bellboys and waiters. Soutine seems to have felt a bond with these despised workers, victims of a rejection he himself had experienced. Through characteristic individuals, such as the room-service waiter of this painting, Soutine evoked the boundless mass of the oppressed.

Modigliani introduced Soutine to the art dealer Leopold Zborowski, who enabled him to spend three years (1919–22) painting at Céret in the south of France. The feverish, visionary landscapes Soutine painted there marked the emergence of his mature style. Soutine spent most of the remainder of his life in Paris. He exhibited little during his lifetime and relentlessly reworked or destroyed old canvases.

Soutine’s portraits from the 1920s, distinguished by their subjects’ twisted faces and distorted limbs and by the emphasis in each canvas on one brilliant colour, frequently red, are among his most expressive works. He seldom showed his works, but he did take part in the important exhibition “The Origins and Development of International Independent Art” held at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume in 1937 in Paris, where he was at last hailed as a great painter. Soon afterwards France was invaded by German troops.

As a Jew, Soutine had to escape from the French capital and hide in order to avoid arrest by the Gestapo. He moved from one place to another and was sometimes forced to seek shelter in forests, sleeping outdoors. Suffering from a stomach ulcer and bleeding badly, he left a safe hiding place for Paris in order to undergo emergency surgery, which failed to save his life. On August 9, 1943, Chaïm Soutine died of a perforated ulcer. He was interred in Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris.

ART SUNDAY - KÄTHE KOLLWITZ

“The community that has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles.” - Plato

Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945) was the daughter of a well to do mason, and was born in East Prussia. Her father encouraged her to draw and when she was 14 years old she began art lessons. She attended The Berlin School of Art in 1884 and later went to study in Munich. After her marriage to Dr. Karl Kollwitz in 1891, the couple settled in Berlin living in one of the poorest sections of the city. It was here that Kollwitz developed her strong social conscious, which is so fiercely reflected in her work.

Unlike Modersohn-Becker’s robust and monumental depictions of motherhood, Käthe Kollwitz’s imagery is marked by poverty-stricken, sickly women who are barely able to care for or nourish their children. Kollwitz’s art resounds with compassion as she makes appeals on behalf of the working poor, the suffering and the sick. Her work serves as an indictment of the social conditions in Germany during the late 19th and early 20th century.

Her art features dark, oppressive subject matter depicting the revolts and uprisings of contemporary relevance. Images of death, war and injustice dominate her work. Kollwitz was influenced by Max Klinger and the realist writings of Zola and she worked with a variety of media including sculpture, and lithography.

It may be argued that her work was an expression of her tumultuous life. She came into contact with some of the cities most needy people and was exposed to great suffering due to the nature of her husband’s work. Her personal life was marred by hardship and heartache. She lost her son to World War I and her grandson to World War II and these losses contributed to her political sympathies.

Käthe Kollwitz became the first woman elected to the Prussian Academy but because of her beliefs, and her art, she was expelled from the academy in 1933. Harassed by the Nazi regime, Kollwitz’s home was bombed in 1943. She was forbidden to exhibit, and her art was classified as “degenerate”. Despite these events, Kollwitz remained in Berlin unlike artists such as Max Beckman and George Grosz who fled the country.

Many of her works were destroyed in a Berlin air raid in 1943. Later that year, Kollwitz was evacuated to Dresden, where she died at age 78. Today she is regarded as one of the most influential German expressionists of the twentieth century.