Blackpaint 136

German Expressionists

I said some blogs ago (Blackpaint 105) that German colours had a sort of dead, livid quality; I applied this to pretty much all German artists from Expressionists to date.  Now, obviously this is a ridiculous generalisation and probably bordering on racial prejudice – nevertheless, I’m going to try to modify the view whilst hanging on to some sort of justification for it, simply because I don’t like admitting to being wrong.

I’ve been looking at a beautiful Taschen book on Expressionism by Dietmar Elger – it has a glowing still life in red, yellow, blue and black on the cover, by Jawlensky – and I’ve decided the “problem” for me is that the pictures are so crowded with colour.  Picture after picture is chock-full of brilliantly coloured images which fill the canvas completely, leaving no space at all.  The colours, to be sure, are sometimes livid and acidic; Schmitt-Rottluff and Max Pechstein in particular, turn is some very livid nudes in acid green-blue and greeny yellow.  But almost all the painters in this book crowd out any space with colour.  The exception is Egon Schiele, who eliminated background from his beautiful, diseased nudes altogether.

So, not dead colour –far from it – but too much of it.  That said, I think that in Beckman’s work, for example, that “deadness”, the washed-out quality, can be discerned and it is echoed in the photographic silver greys and dark browns used on and off by Kippenberger, Kiefer and Tuymans (not German, but still) and others.

Flak Tower by Blackpaint.

Listening to Newport News Blues by Will Shade.

“Now don’t you wish your easy roller was both little and cute like mine? (*2)

Every time she walks, you know she reels and rocks behind”.

Blackpaint

18.05.10

Tags: Beckmann, Expressionism, Jawlensky, Kiefer, Kippenberger, Pechstein, Schiele, Schmitt-Rottluff, Tuymans