German Expressionism versus Surrealism

¶ … Expressionists€ ™ view of German cities to the Surrealists€ ™ vision of Paris in visual arts and literature and film (give examples of artworks).

German Expressionism vs. Surrealism:

Contrasting views of the urban landscape in visual arts and film

The 20th century art movement of Expressionism is particularly associated with Germany. Expressionist art is distinguished by its intense colors, distorted shapes, and focus upon the darker aspects of modern, urban life (Pioch 2002). The bright colors may have had their roots in Fauvism and Post-Impressionism, but the expressionists used these colors to invoke a sense of hostility, even despair, rather than joy (Pioch 2002). Rather than beauty even the brightest colors were used to convey a sense of distortion and fear. This can be seen in Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's 1913 Berlin Street Scene where the colors are used to convey a sense of violence and the visual texture has been said to be characterized by a sense of hysteria (Pioch 2002). The faces of the fashionable women and the bohemian man with a cigarette in the image look superficially jaunty and gay, but the distorted, almost El Greco-like elongation of perspective and clashing cool blues and rabid rose shades create a sense of fear and uncertainty in the heart of the gazer. Something unpleasant seems to lurk beneath the city's surface, even though he or she is not quite sure what it is.

Expressionism has been called a Romantic movement because of the fact that it was concentrated upon liberating the artist's individual soul through color, shape, and texture (Hobbs 2002:299). In contrast, the competing artistic movement of the early 20th century, Surrealism, has been called 'classical' in tone (Hobbs 2002:299-300). Although the distorted and strange images of the surrealist artists may not seem 'classical' on the surface, the surrealists often used conventional representations in odd, juxtaposed images to unseat the viewer's perception of reality. The intention of Surrealism was primarily intellectual and satirical, with a profound sense of humor, versus the 'cry from the heart' embodied in German Expressionism. Surrealism was born in Paris, and actually has its roots as a literary movement rather than a visual arts movement (Voorhies 2004).

Surrealism's cerebral, playful nature can be seen in Max Ernst's Une Semaine de Bonte, a surrealist collage of images from Victorian drawings. The actual visual texture of the work is very conventional and realistic, but the actual images shown are not, such as a lion's head pasted on top of a cut-out image of Napoleon, a man with a raven's head, or a city gentleman with bat's wings kissing a fine lady in a drawing room. These potentially disturbing images are presented in a very matter-of-fact manner, which create a humorous and ironic impression. The fact that a collage of real-life images that were produced 'seriously' are used to create absurd images highlights Surrealism's connection to Postmodernism and other artistic movements dependent upon irony and inversion for their verbal language.