Major project: research RE-ASSESMENT

 Expressionism 

Expressionism is a movement that comes from Germany and Austria. It started in the early twentieth century. It lasted from 1905 to1920 and spread through the Europe. Expressionism was inspired by the Symbolism. Vincent Van Gogh, Edward Munch and James Ensor were very influential to this movement. They encouraged to use different shapes, strong colours and show different emotions. The term expressionism was coined by Antonin Matejcek, Czech art historian. He wanted this term to be in opposition to Impressionism. 

Expressionism wasn’t about painting what we see.  It was about feelings and artists. Expressionism artists use different techniques to show emotional state of artist reacting to the anxieties of the world. They tried to express subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse with a person. They used distortion, exaggeration, fantasy and dynamic form of elements. 

In Germany, expressionist artists split the movement into two groups:

- Die Brücke. This artists wanted to have their independence in transforming the subject  matter. They paint using thick, raw strokes shows alienation, anxiety and despair.

- Der Blaue Reiter. This artists redefined art as an object without subject matter, but with perceptual properties that were able to show feelings  

Expressionism in cinema  

German movies from the first half of the decade, are known as “German Expressionism”. They borrowed mane from the avant-grade movement. The most famous was "The cabinet of  Dr. Caligari (1920)" by Robert Wiene. German expressionist filmmakers used visual distortion and expressive performance to show inner fears and desires of that era.  They rejected cinematic realism and showed dramatic, revolutionary interpretations of the human condition. German filmmakers as a reaction to a widespread anxiety created tales of madness and terror that reflected different foreboding and yearnings associated with a culture. Expressionists believed that the world and body are dominated by the Spirit. In posters designers keeps the stylisation of films. They had the same dark style as the movies they were made for.

Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920), Directed by Robert Wiene

This poster was an advertisement to the Robert Wiene’s movie “The cabinet of Dr. Caligari”. The movie was hypnotising and surrealistic. It was movie tale of mystery and horror. Poster is dark but artist used also bright colours like red. This colour is bright but reminds me only about blood and death. 

F.W. Murnau adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1922)

"Nosferatu" is a 1922 silent German expressionism horror film. The movie is an unauthorised and unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker. It is about vampire. Artists used also dark colours. Poster makes us scared and uncomfortable. Person on poster have big, bulging eyes.

This research helps me understand and be more familiar with how expressionism posters look like. In my Martians post I was trying to mixed two images but final outcome doesn’t look like expressionism art. Now I know that I have to choose colours carefully and create more “dark” posters. I am also now more familiar with more artists that created in this style. I will be writing about them in my future research posts. In this research I looked also on the layout of the posters. I noticed that artists used than specific kind of the fonts and that had less formations on posters itself. What I also notice is that the create 'frame' and add description on this margins. 

References:

Guity Novin (no date) Available at: http://guity-novin.blogspot.com/2015/10/chapter-86-history-of-german.html (Acessed: 23 January 2021).

Samuel Harries (no date) Available at: https://www.movementsinfilm.com/german-expressionism (Acessed: 23 January 2021).