The works that best exemplify a uniquely German grotesque in Reexamining the Grotesque are those that reflect the war and Weimar years.
German Expressionism
Hans Hartung, No Matter What They Say
Hartung’s work most likely didn’t go over well in the heyday of conceptualism, earth art, and the literal use of materials.
Denzel Washington Stars in a New Black-and-White Macbeth
Working for the first time without his brother Ethan, Coen’s film adaptation, featuring Denzel Washington as Macbeth, embraces the text with unusual faithfulness.
Pioneers of German Expressionism Who Teetered on the Edge of Abstraction
With Franz Marc and August Macke: 1909-1914, the Neue Galerie implicitly argues that the two artists belong among the pantheon of Europe’s modern masters.
Rediscovering Wenzel Hablik, an Expressionist Painter of Utopian Architectures
Hablik’s fantastical and cosmic vision of utopia hinged on the aspirations of a still-emerging industrial age.
Browsing the Pages of an Avant-Garde, Weimar-Era Magazine
Der Sturm, the title of the arts magazine that served as the mouthpiece for German Expressionism during the Weimar Republic, translates to “the storm.”
A German Expressionist Space Fantasy: Scheerbart’s “Lesabéndio: An Asteroid Novel”
The German fantasist Paul Scheerbart’s greatest novel, Lesabéndio, was first published in 1913, the year that Expressionism began to flower in Berlin. The novel, both deriving from and contributing to this Zeitgeist, opens with a highly Expressionist scene: “The sky was violet, and the stars were green. The sun was green too.”