Doom and Gloom, German Expressionism and Neos at the NGA

 

German expressionism evokes blue horses, lavish nudes in natural settings, portraits revealing deep emotions- in short, a liberation from the corsets of academic art.  During the period 1900-1930, political turmoil, rumbles of war, crushed dreams of a lower class abandoned by the industrial revolution, threats from infectious diseases, contributed to a state of angst reverberating through the art world. It is also a time of inner self-discovery spearheaded by Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis and Karl Jung, his younger disciple. The Anxious Eye: German Expressionism and Its Legacy at the National Gallery of Art assembles more than one hundred works created from 1908 to 1921, selected from its permanent collection. The display of mainly prints reflects a renewed interest for the cheaper and faster process involved in their production. It also features drawings, two sculptures and illustrated books. The small size of the works allows for a rich show organized by themes, set in four galleries of the West building.

The self-portraits of Heckel and Kirshner introduce two of the founding artists of Die Brücke, an art movement established in 1905 in Dresden, heavily influenced by Munch from Norway and the Belgian Ensor. Their harsh features are barely soften by colors for Heckel or the subtle blurriness of crayon for Kirshner. The intense gaze of Max Beckmann reveals his profound sadness conveyed through deep frowns and drooping corners of the mouth. For Käthe Kollwitz, self-portraits are "psychological milestones" and if she drew more than fifty of them, she is well known for her realistic depiction of the proletariat. She found her inspiration in war, starvation, poverty, and in 1910, she represents herself with a hand on her forehead, lost in mournful inner thoughts. Did she have a premonition of the tragedies to come? She lost a son in WWI and a grandson in WWII as the world fell apart. In two woodcuts made in the twenties she adopts a tragic expression, and in 1933 draws a serene charcoal version in profile where she appears to forget her torments, absorbed by her art. The hellish portrait of Walter Gramatté who volunteered for the front at seventeen years old, could illustrate one of the Grimm's tales. The expression of fright in The Great Anxiety (1918) reflects a blood curling vision most likely due to the horrors he witnessed during the war. Portraiture, the first part of the exhibition assembles twenty five works and goes on with portraits of luminaries or anonymous sitters. Death, violence, depravity, are feeding the artists' inspiration and works from well-known artists like George Grosz (Attack, 1915) or Otto Dix (Dance of Death Anno 17, 1924) are found next to those of the elder Christian Rohlfs (The Prisoner, 1918) or lesser known Paul Gangolf (Prostitute on Cocaine, 1925). Sorrow, 1914, a grayish allegory from Egon Schiele is a fitting conclusion for this chilling first part as a last sweeping glance fails to reveal a smile among the portraits.  

Moving on, Nature and Spirituality might feature soothing landscapes, maybe even a blue sky?  Two Pietàs (Max Oppenheimer and Georg Ehrlich), Christ Bearing the Cross (1916) and The Fall of Man (1919), from Lovis Corinth, and other religious themed prints feature more harrowing scenes of suffering, suggesting a redeeming spiritual value to humanity's misery. Close by the mountains from Kirchner or the fishing steamer from Emil Nolde appear irrelevant in the midst of a tormented world while the sunrise from Heckel is filled with bad omens. Communion with nature implies nudity, and nudes are plentiful in two of the galleries. Set in primal surroundings, forests, beaches, the models are caught in playful or more contemplative activities. Kirchner is well represented so are Mueller, Pechstein and Heckel. Angular, sharp lines, sickly yellowish colors, the portraits-caricatures reflect the technique of the German expressionists, transforming the Arcadian settings into depressing sights. The erotic nude from the Austrian Egon Schiele stands out with its generous shapes and decaying flesh. Against this somber background, a carefree and permissive atmosphere floated in some circles, evoked in two lithographs about dance and cabarets. The scantily clad dancer in Tänzerin (1913) from Nolde refers to black performers favored by a white bourgeois audience looking for a steamy entertainment.

Colors and size of the seventeen works in the last gallery contrast with the mostly black and white display so far. A dozen artists, from various backgrounds and continents have been selected and their works cover about seventy years, from the 1950's until today. They have little in common and never met, but are assembled under the theme: German Expressionism Reimagined. If the works from Georg Baselitz and A. R. Penk both Germans relate to neo-expressionism, a loosely defined international movement born in the 1980s, it is odd to find David Driskell's  self-portrait inspired by "African art but as seen through the lens of ancestral legacy rather than European colonialism" (wall text). On the American side, Leonard Baskin with The Hydrogen Man (1954) belongs to the list of neo-expressionist artists. His self-portrait is hung between Shikō Munakata, a printmaker inspired by Van Gogh, Buddhism and Japanese folk art, and a woodcut from Kerry James Marshall. One can question the inclusion of Sam Francis considered an abstract expressionist painter or the choice of a monochrome red abstract screen print from Rachid Johnson about COVID, BLM and George Floyd, according to the press release. Figurative is one of the hallmark of neo expressionism, in reaction to abstract.  The three women selected for the show, Miriam Beerman, Nicole Eisenman and Orit Hofshi meet the neo expressionism criteria, from technique to subject. All the works reflect angst, a few of them are related to German expressionism. 

The ambitious goal of  the exhibition as stated by Kaywin Feldman, director of the National Gallery of Art is "to invite visitors to consider the striking parallels between the intensity of human emotion and experience conveyed in the work of the German expressionists during a transformational historic period in the early 20th century and current responses to the cultural and political shifts taking place in our world today." The result is a superficial review of German expressionism through prints. The wall texts give little information about the political context or the influence of Die Brücke which is not even mentioned. For decades, the poorly understood movement in France and even America was labelled as "une erreur gothico-teutonique" (a gothico-teutonic mistake). The sweeping statements erode history especially art history and imply that expressionism was invented by German artists. The means of conveying inner emotions in an expressionistic way is independent of time. The wall texts are cursory and offer little information about the artists who might not be well known by some visitors, missing the educational mission of the museum. The exhibition leaves a chilling message: a look at the past does not forebode well for the future. 

                                                

photographs by the author:

Erich Heckel "Portrait of a Man (Self-Portrait)", 1919

Otto Mueller "Two Bathers", c. 1920

Leonard Baskin "The Hydrogen Man", 1954

Emil Nolde "Dancer", 1913 

Beauty and Happiness, Alma Thomas

 

The artist's name is seldom found in history books, if at all. Following her retirement from teaching art, at the age of sixty, Alma Thomas veered from a figurative practice to an abstract style that defies time and classification. A long-time resident of Washington, D.C., she has been associated with the Washington Color School. A Black woman in an art world dominated by Abstract Expressionist white males, she did not seek fame and also stayed away from her peers' activism during the civil rights movement. She was honored when in 1972 at the age of eighty-one she had a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, a first for an African-American woman. Over the past decades, she has gained recognition  locally in D.C. where her paintings can be seen at The Phillips Collection or the Hirshhorn. They are also included in the permanent collections of institutions like The Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art or the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas is the latest exhibition of her work taking place at the Smithsonian American Museum of Art which "holds the largest public collection of Thomas's works in the world". About thirty of her paintings are on display for the show dedicated to her late years, starting in the sixties.

The Patent Office building, oldest public construction in Washington, now holds the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery. The wide corridors leading to the galleries are lined up with paintings and on the second floor, two works from Alma Thomas are an irresistible call to view the show. Resurrection (1966), a rather small sized square painting belongs to the White House's collection and was prominently displayed during the Obama administration. Centered on a pale green orb, an explosion of colors going through the gamut of the color wheel radiates in circles, from a cold blue to a sunny yellow trying to spill beyond the canvas. On the other side, Atmospheric Effects I (1970) is a calming blue field interrupted by small bands of burning red and yellow and a few notes of tranquil green. The paint drips at the bottom as if the work is still in progress, evoking the ever-changing state of nature.

Space, the first theme reflects Thomas's interest in technology, science, and the Apollo mission she watched on television, which provided photographs of the Earth from space inspiring the artist for Snoopy-Early Sun Display on Earth (1970) and Blast Off made the same year, a painting which now belongs to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Antares (1972), a monochrome rendition of the bright star, shimmers due to the innumerable red thick strokes aligned in vertical stripes on the white canvas. The biggest piece in this room, The Eclipse (1970), is built with the same pattern than Renaissance including the color scheme. The story of the rare and fleeting event is told with an off-centered dark orb, the moon, moving across the canvas.

Upon entering the next room labelled Nature and Earth, I felt overcome by joy. For her series about nature, the artist revisited her childhood's memories or just looked at her backyard through the window of her kitchen-studio. Rows of horizontal lines of colored patches for Light Blue Nursery, 1968, or vertical white lines on a green background for  Snow Reflections on Pond, 1973, Thomas adopts the same technique for the abstract paintings about nature, yet they generate different emotions, one of happiness, the other of melancholy. Fall Begins,1976 or Autumn Leaves Fluttering in the Breeze, 1973, a symphony of reds or oranges, are like a last hurrah before winter. Spring Grass, 1973, a monochrome bright green is all about patterns built with interwoven brisk short strokes of paint on the white canvas. The result is so fresh that we can smell the grass. While surrounded by the paintings, distillate of nature, we can hear melodies, sample perfumes, and feel the warmth or the coolness of the seasons. 

The titles of the five paintings assembled in the third room allude to music, a fundamental component of Thomas's practice. Red Sunset: Old Pond Concerto (1972), is found with late works like Untitled (Music Series) (1978), made the year of her death. The display allows to follow her experimentations, introducing what she called "hieroglyphs" like in Grassy Melodic Songs (1976). Her lively works do not reflect her physical decline in her late years and Red Azaleas Singing and Dancing Rock and Roll Music (1978) found in the modern and contemporary art galleries on the third floor, created for her last solo show, is a testimony of the artist's relentless energy.

An art teacher for decades, Alma Thomas was most likely very well versed in the theories about colors, Bauhaus, synesthesia in art, and more. She grew up with music, nature, and of curious mind, stayed abreast of scientific discoveries. She was not engaged in activism, her mission was a search for beauty and happiness. Lost in the colors and rhythms of the paintings, we connect with her as she generously shares a primitive simple pleasure of being alive and answers to our questions:  What is beauty? What is happiness? 

Alma Thomas's reply makes her work defy time and classification: “Through color, I have sought to concentrate on beauty and happiness, rather than on man’s inhumanity to man.” 

                                                       

photographs by the author:

"The Eclipse", 1970

"Untitled (Music Series), 1978

display Nature and Earth

Rapping on canvas, Alexandre Diop

 

2022 was a big year for Alexandre Diop, the Franco-Senegalese artist now living in Vienna, Austria. Under the mentorship of Kehinde Wiley, his first exhibition in Paris "La prochaine fois, le feu" opened during the art fair Paris+ by Art Basel, in October. Following a four-month-long residency at the Rubell Museum Miami at the beginning of the year, he filled the venue with his work for a solo show in December, just in time for Art Basel Miami Beach. Presently, five of his "roaring monumental canvasses" are on view at the Rubell Museum DC, displayed in the vast luminous foyer at the entrance of the building, a renovated high school, part of a project aimed at revitalizing the neighborhood. 

First impressions are lasting. Surrounded by Diop's works I remember being overwhelmed by the dense imagery filling the vast space. I could not figure out the subject of the works other than it seemed epic, and I got closer  to Mondo Carne (2022). The huge painting (103x191 in.) describes an apocalyptic world through gruesome scenes featuring flailed bodies, skulls, screaming, disfigured faces... a pile of human misery.  One cannot avoid thinking of Basquiat when looking at the painting which also includes barely legible writing in French meaning "stop this masquerade, there is enough to eat for everyone" (according to the wall text). The disturbing picture we are looking at seems from another time or another world, and yet, is inspired by the daily struggle of entire populations to survive, as "you enjoy your $2-dollar extra shot in your venti Starbucks Coffee". Made with traditional oil paint, oil stick, pastel, acrylic, charcoal, gouache on canvas, the raw, visceral composition is a violent, gruesome start to the show. 

L'incroyable Traversée d'Abdoulaye Le Grand, Troisième de la Lignée (The Incredible Crossing of Abdoulaye the Great, Third in Line to the Throne), 2022, tells the mythical story of Abdoulaye, obviously the artist. Initially a scenario for a movie,  the fable relates the journey of the hero who interacts with different characters, some good, others bad. Black and white, good and bad, a crossing between two worlds alludes to the river Styx of the Greek mythology. Cerberus becomes a monster tamed by Abdoulaye riding the beast. The story built with themes embedded in our psyche unfolds from left to right and the white background of the triptych allows the silhouettes of the personages to stand out in lively postures. Looking at the details of the elaborate graffiti-like composition reveals the very personal technique of the artist who arranges refuses found in the streets, dumps and various indescribable places, using hammers and staplers to tack them to the wooden canvas. 

Diop starts gathering material like a sculptor and produces scenes worthy of a painter like the next triptych, a colorful composition titled L'Histoire du Monde-Le Temps et l'Espace (The History of the World-Time and Space), 2022. The ambitious subject is tackled with gusto by the artist who manages to add a dash of  humor. If Eve, the temptress and the cause of our downfall is present, the monkey on the lower right takes over the work about the past. The wise observer has a pensive gaze and a sardonic grin as he scratches his head. This is the miracle of art: how to render such an insightful expression with pieces of colored paper. The word "loco" nearby, like in a cartoon, conveys his thoughts as he looks at the history of mankind. The location for the present is in Miami as per an upside down banner on top of the second panel. The claustrophobic accumulation of images, scribbles, dribbles, snippets of advertisements, with a partly decomposed portrait of Warhol (at least his wig), alludes to a confused, stressful world filled with anxiety. A lost breasted-man occupies most of the third tableau about the  future as thriving monkeys keep watching the world led by cartels and its final apocalypse.

 Following these visionary, mythic, violent works, the two nudes side by side on the facing wall feel out of place. Honi soit qui mal y pense (Shame be (to him) who thinks evil of it), 2022 and Le Mensonge d'État (The Lie of the State), 2021 are replicas (Diop's style) respectively of the famous Grande Odalisque (1814) from Ingres and Olympia (1863-1865) from Édouart Manet. Every detail is carefully reproduced: fan, blue drapery, long spine, elongated arm. The face appears to be a mask with the same detached expression. Idem for Olympia and her erotic posture, the orchid in the hair, the black servant. I could not find the cat, and the bunch of flowers is replaced by a text "Cheikh Anta Diop, Civilisation ou Barbarie". It refers to the Senegalese historian, anthropologist , physicist and politician with the same surname than the artist. Looking carefully to each portrait, there are more scribbled messages. To quote the artist about his works: "there’s really a lot for me to talk about every time I discuss these pieces".  

Not a painting, not a sculpture, not a tapestry, not a graffiti, not a bas-relief, ... Diop has mastered a unique technique, using objects as his palette, hammers and staplers as his brushes. He also sometimes leaves his own blood and spit as he works fast and furiously on his canvasses. The scion of an ancestral Senegalese family, he has a vision of history mixed with an anti-establishment view permeating through his work. Not quite thirty years old, the artist is looking forward to a bright future, and has many projects and ideas: "There are so many things I want to do. For me, this is really just the beginning of my career. I want to develop and not repeat the same things...I think the act of painting or sculpture is to recreate [oneself] as a human... It’s also not always about art, it’s also about life. What I feel. What I see." The future will tell what is next for the multidisciplinary artist full of promises. Hopefully he does not get too close to the fire and burn his wings, like Icarus who melted his getting to close to the sun. 

photographs by the author:

Mondo Carne (2022)

L'Histoire du Monde-Le Temps et l'Espace (The History of the World-Time and Space) detail, 2022

Honi soit qui mal y pense (Shame be (to him) who thinks evil of it), 2022