Henri Matisse, Madame Matisse
Henri Matisse, Harmony in Red
Henri Matisse, The Dance
Henri Matisse, The Red Studio
Henri Matisse, The Open Window
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Self Portrait with Model
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, The Street
Erich Heckel, Crouching Figure, sculpture
Emil Nolde, Christ Among the Children
Gustav Klimt, Athena
Gustav Klimt, Justice (destroyed)
Egon Schiele, Self Portrait with Webbed Fingers
Oskar Kokoschka, Portrait of Adolph Loos
Oskar Kokoschka, The Bride of the Wind
HENRI MATISSE
expressionism
Fauve
"Luxe, Calme, et Volupte"
GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM
Die Brucke (The Bridge)
--EL Kirchner
--Emil Nolde
Viennese Expressionism
--Gustav Klimt
--Egon Schiele
--Oskar Kokoschka
Expressionism and the Movies
After the First World War, film directors in Central and Eastern Europe looked to German Expressionist artists for inspiration, for a new way to visually tell stories, and to affect the emotions of movie-goers.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1919
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was the first Expressionist movie, and one of the first horror films. It is the story of a murderous sleepwalker kept by a sinister sideshow magician, Dr. Caligari. The wildly distorted sets, inspired by the work of artists like Kirchner and Karl Schmitt-Rotluff, play a role that becomes apparent toward the end of the movie. All is not what it seems to be, as it turns out. The whole story is the vision of a paranoid obsessive. The exaggerated set suggests the world seen through the eyes of a madman.
Nosferatu, 1922
FW Murnau's Nosferatu was the first vampire movie. Murnau's conception of a vampire was very different from the one that prevails in movies today. In movies since the days of Bela Lugosi playing Count Dracula, the vampire is a glamorous figure of dangerous and forbidden sexuality. That remains true in the current spate of vampire movies for teens.
Murnau's Nosferatu is very different and remains probably the most original imagining of the vampire story. In this movie, the vampire is rat-like with prominent teeth and huge grasping hands. Murnau associates the undead blood-drinker with disease and crime, as well as with a much more menacing sexuality. Rats and the plague follow this vampire where ever he travels.
The extreme contrasts between light and dark, the odd camera angles, the use of shadows, and the use of settings and atmosphere to tell a story would have an enormous influence on later movies down to the present day.
