The Era Of German Expressionism

Between 1900 and 1933 Expressionist artists created some of the most dramatic and enduring images of the twentieth century. This volume brings together the thoughts and aspirations of the individuals who brought about this revolutionary epoch in the visual arts. It offers readers the opportunity to engage at firsthand with key writings by the most significant artists of the Expressionist era.

New essays examining the complex period of rich artistic ferment that was German literary Expressionism.

In the early years of the 20th century, a group of young artists including Ernst Kirchner, Vassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, liberated themselves from traditional representation by using distortion and vibrant, unrealistic colour in their painting. Eroticism became a tool for exposing the lies and decadence of society, whilst motifs borrowed from African, Oceanic and Buddhist art further questioned bourgeois culture. Later, the cruelty of World War I was reflected violently in the work of Max Beckmann, Otto Dix and George Grosz.

New essays by leading scholars giving a new picture of the variety of German expressionist cinema.

Primitivism versus modernity: the expressionist dilemma - Politics of primitivism - Brucke bathers: back to nature - Max Pechstein's visionary ideas - Emil Nolded.

One of the most visually striking traditions in cinema, for too long Expressionism has been a neglected critical category of research in film history and aesthetics. The fifteen essays in this anthology remedies this by revisiting key German films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922), and also provide original critical research into more obscure titles like Nerven (1919) and The Phantom Carriage (1921), films that were produced in the silent and early sound era in countries ranging from France, Sweden and Hungary, to the United States and Mexico.An innovative and wide-ranging collection, Expressionism in the Cinema re-canonizes the classical Expressionist aesthetic, extending the critical and historical discussion beyond pre-existing scholarship into comparative and interdisciplinary areas of film research that reach across national boundaries.