Women and Modernity: In and Around German Expressionism—Selections from the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies and Los Angeles Public and Private Collections
LACMA, Los Angeles
November 24, 2000 – April 8, 2001
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents Women and Modernity: In and Around German Expressionism—Selections from the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies and Los Angeles Public and Private Collections, an exhibition that explores the changing role of women at the turn of the last century through approximately 70 works including painting, sculpture, woodcuts, lithographs, and drawings. This exhibition examines the shift in German Expressionist art as women left the cocoon of private residences, salons, and balls and emerged on the streets of the modern city, where many now held jobs and pursued careers.
The exhibition is divided into four main sections:
The first focus of the exhibition is The Modern City, which portrays women in the burgeoning new metropolises. This changing role is seen in Two Women (1911–1912 ) by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (Germany, 1880–1938). The subjects of this painting have angled forms that reflect the jagged shapes of the city around them, lending an unsettling note to a commonplace outing. Women in the city were also portrayed as spectators or performers in the theater, as in Kirchner' s woodcuts Theaterloge (Theater box, 1909) and Tänzerin mit gehobenem Rock (Dancer with lifted skirt, 1910).
The second section, Nudes, demonstrates how nature and women were rendered using new styles and approaches. Representative of the Brücke artists’ collective style is the color woodcut by Kirchner, Bathers Tossing Reeds (1910), as well as works created by Erich Heckel and Max Pechstein between 1910 and 1912. These portrayals of women surrounded by nature feature different poses than those of earlier depictions and stand in sharp contrast to the urban women in section one. Works in this section also show how the artists studied and imitated the nudes of Old Masters, which often emphasized the beauty of the female form. In works such as Untitled (Seated woman) (1914) by Egon Schiele (Austria, 1890–1918), the female body is portrayed as beautiful. This section also includes two erotic etchings of disrobing women by Lene Schneider Kainer, an artist largely forgotten by history.
The third section is Photographic Portraits. Faces in German Expressionist prints are often reduced to minimal features, the face of a nude often delineated only by its contours. Photographic portraits in this section provide the missing features and facial expressions and they further explore the differences between women as subjects and women as artists. For example, Lotte Jacobi’s Self-portrait (c. 1930) is a record of a woman who proudly presents herself as a professional photographer. Her hand holds the camera release; the cable visibly connects her to the tool of her trade.
The last section, Women Portray Women, focuses on the works of three women artists: Gabriele Münter (Germany, 1877–1962), Käthe Kollwitz (Germany, 1867–1945), and Paula Modersohn-Becker (Germany, 1876–1907). Although these artists encountered various degrees of success in their time, each participated in and uniquely inflected the artistic vocabularies of moderninity.
This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036
www.lacma.org
