Expressions, feelings and emotions-abstract and intangible-are, perhaps, hardest things to explain. Sometimes, dictionary may not serve the purpose, for the words are unable to express your feelings. As Francesco Guicciardini has quoted, “To give vent now and then to his feelings, whether of pleasure or discontent, is a great ease to a man’s heart.” What if we can’t give words to our emotions? Well, creative people were and are fully aware of the answer and that was how and where expressionism found its roots.
Expressionism was an art movement started after World War I in Germany. It is defined as a theory or practice in art of seeking to depict the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse in the artist. The movement was started to express the inner feelings of oneself through art. Artists used canvas to pour themselves out while some others began to paint for the sake of catharsis. A new era started in the history of painting and a new branch emerged out which unbounded the artists from the limitations of reality into a realm of spirituality and inner self. Surfacial art like scenery and real images was overcome by subjects such as existence and purpose.
Emotions keep varying with the atmosphere or more precisely, it’s your inner feeling that gives colors to atmosphere around you. At some times, emotions are intense while at others, they are mild and expressionists used colors and brush strokes to indicate the intensity of their feelings. When they depicted intense emotions, the colors used in the art were bright and brush strokes were bold. These characteristics gave their paintings a unique quality of being vivid
as well as abstract. They were vivid due to intensity of artist’s emotions and abstract because they reflected thoughts and revealed inner self.
There were two groups which played a vital role in the early development of expressionism: die brucke and der blaue reiter also known as the bridge and the blue riders respectively. They led the movement and it flourished by the exhibitions they held for the acknowledgement of their work and people started appreciating this art. Emotions and deep feelings which were hidden until then began to materialize on paper in the form of art. It became a way to disclose one’s response, opinion and deep secrets one kept to oneself for so long, for the diction was limited to express one’s unlimited feelings. Georgia O’Keeffe acknowledged the fact by saying, “I found I could say things with colors and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for”.
The bridge started off their journey in 1905 with a theme to reform the society. Their art portrayed the discrimination between the rich and the poor, the city and the country in the society and the chaos prevailing in it. They exhibited their art in violent colors, with turbulent emotions and in chaotic manners. That was the bridge’s way of expressing its views about the society at that time.
In contrast to the matters of physical world, the blue riders adopted spirituality as its theme. It initiated its work in 1911 and its paintings dealt with subjects such as philosophy, spirituality and metaphysics. Its art was thus abstract and vague rather than obvious. Moreover, every artist painted his own ideas and quests in whatever way he imagined or felt them to be. Since, these ideas were beyond the scope of reality and human intellect, they didn’t have a specific description and so the trend was heavily in favor of ambiguous and obscure art in that era.
Expressionism deeply impacted society at the time when it was prevalent and dominating other forms of art. That is, after World War I, there was chaos in the society and massacre was commonplace. Expressionists came up with such paintings that gave a new insight to people about what was going on around them. Art has always been used to motivate public and so was expressionism, and it did what it was intended to do; the society moved towards betterment and prosperity.
Apart from the social factors, expressionists reinstated the spirit of spirituality in the general masses. They urged people to give due attention to the matters of soul and self by virtue of their work. They put in much effort to help people value morality and escape the trap of materialism.
In effect, the movement of expressionism achieved its intended goals. It succeeded in extracting the deep lying emotions out of people and gave words of colors and paints to their feelings, so that they were better able to express themselves. Furthermore, it served the purpose of rejuvenating the underlying spiritual and moral values. Expressionism brought improvements in social behavior of people, economic conditions of society and political setup of the country.
Duality28 