Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Big City Landscapes (Großstadtbilder), 1913-1915.
The concept of city, as an entity, as a live, ever-changing creature, constantly undergoing transformations that are not always physically-evident or visible but can nevertheless be perceived by a human mind, a human heart, has always attracted me in a strangely irrepressible way. I find it hard to trace back the origin of this fascination, but its force reaches me through all its manifestations - a picture, a photograph, a character in a narrative (I believe cities are never mere settings), in a film, or the real thing. It might be the idea of so many things happening, of familiarity or sometimes and disorientation some other times (even both at the same time); of possibilities, of entrapment; of hectic ant-like activity or of sepulchral stillness. A city can be everything, can mean anything, and a person can be a million different selves with the turn of another corner.
The concept of city, as an entity, as a live, ever-changing creature, constantly undergoing transformations that are not always physically-evident or visible but can nevertheless be perceived by a human mind, a human heart, has always attracted me in a strangely irrepressible way. I find it hard to trace back the origin of this fascination, but its force reaches me through all its manifestations - a picture, a photograph, a character in a narrative (I believe cities are never mere settings), in a film, or the real thing. It might be the idea of so many things happening, of familiarity or sometimes and disorientation some other times (even both at the same time); of possibilities, of entrapment; of hectic ant-like activity or of sepulchral stillness. A city can be everything, can mean anything, and a person can be a million different selves with the turn of another corner.
Perhaps Kirchner's most famous series of paintings is the one dedicated to capture the essence, the true, winding, mutating spirit of the big city. Even in those paintings with no human figures -or in which they almost fade into the architecture-, his urban landscapes manage to retrieve the uneasy energy of metropolitan life in the years before World War I. Although Kirchner also painted scenes from smaller towns, his eye fell mostly upon major cities such as Berlin or Dresden; it was the tribulations of their inhabitants, the moral decay directly proportional to industrial development, the greyness of bourgeois life that triggered his art. This greyness he frequently foregrounded by contrasting it with colorful surroundings, yet his later pictures of the urban series all share a paler hue, mirroring his increasing disenchantment with society.
As we can see in his vision of Postdamer Platz (1914), the very heart of Berlin, many of his cityscapes are dominated by human figures -sometimes even "reduced" to that. Two women (bourgeois or prostitutes?) appear at the centre of the scene, dressed in dark, sober, elegant clothes, with a severe or even menacing expression. Engulfed by the sharp street behind them and the cutting-edged buildings around, they seem to raise on their circular platform. The way they are portrayed seems to imply a certain alienation from the rest of the scene, all the urban frenzy happening behind them. A stretched-out male figure steps off the arrow-like sidewalk, as if trying to reach that female island, and is confronted with the green, slashing brushstrokes that make up the asphalt and seem to convey an idea of urban wilderness.
The picture transmits an almost surprising sense of space and depth against the flatness of the characters with the pointy edges sticking out of the painting. Kirchner learned this technique from cubism, and combined it with the expressionist preference for impossible forms to give his works a deeper perspective, almost psychological. Using mostly dark, pale colors -shades of green, blue, grey and black-, the scene sends a twilight feeling, as if alerting of the decay of urban life and the threat of the war. The red buildings on the background do not exactly lighten up the scene, but rather contribute to the menacing atmosphere, as if they were actually covered in blood. It is interesting to notice how within the crowd that fills up the scene, the women are dressed in a reddish, skin-like pink hue. Given Kirchner's preference for female figures, this could symbolize his last hope for redemption, the last chink of optimism in the doom and gloom of the times.
Perhaps this is one of the best examples of Kirchner's quest for clarity amidst confusion. Despite the cluster of shapes behind the two women and the twisted, tangled lines and shapes of the architecture, buildings, people and space are perfectly discernible. The motor of human energy is still running, it still casts its force within the power of urban and technological progress that at times seems to gulp it all. Life, he seems to be saying, still prevails. However, the overall gloominess and melancholy of the scene manages to forecast the tragedy that is about to overcome every corner of German society, of German people, and that will imbue most expressionist works in the following years -the ghost of World War I.
As we can see in his vision of Postdamer Platz (1914), the very heart of Berlin, many of his cityscapes are dominated by human figures -sometimes even "reduced" to that. Two women (bourgeois or prostitutes?) appear at the centre of the scene, dressed in dark, sober, elegant clothes, with a severe or even menacing expression. Engulfed by the sharp street behind them and the cutting-edged buildings around, they seem to raise on their circular platform. The way they are portrayed seems to imply a certain alienation from the rest of the scene, all the urban frenzy happening behind them. A stretched-out male figure steps off the arrow-like sidewalk, as if trying to reach that female island, and is confronted with the green, slashing brushstrokes that make up the asphalt and seem to convey an idea of urban wilderness.
The picture transmits an almost surprising sense of space and depth against the flatness of the characters with the pointy edges sticking out of the painting. Kirchner learned this technique from cubism, and combined it with the expressionist preference for impossible forms to give his works a deeper perspective, almost psychological. Using mostly dark, pale colors -shades of green, blue, grey and black-, the scene sends a twilight feeling, as if alerting of the decay of urban life and the threat of the war. The red buildings on the background do not exactly lighten up the scene, but rather contribute to the menacing atmosphere, as if they were actually covered in blood. It is interesting to notice how within the crowd that fills up the scene, the women are dressed in a reddish, skin-like pink hue. Given Kirchner's preference for female figures, this could symbolize his last hope for redemption, the last chink of optimism in the doom and gloom of the times.
Perhaps this is one of the best examples of Kirchner's quest for clarity amidst confusion. Despite the cluster of shapes behind the two women and the twisted, tangled lines and shapes of the architecture, buildings, people and space are perfectly discernible. The motor of human energy is still running, it still casts its force within the power of urban and technological progress that at times seems to gulp it all. Life, he seems to be saying, still prevails. However, the overall gloominess and melancholy of the scene manages to forecast the tragedy that is about to overcome every corner of German society, of German people, and that will imbue most expressionist works in the following years -the ghost of World War I.