Undergraduate Course: Romanticism to Expressionism (HIAR10108)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh College of Art |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course examines the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century artistic quest for the origins of Germanic identity and the Romantic roots of early Expressionism. Identity, as it is understood here, is a multifaceted concept, one that might encompass geo-politics, self-perception, or, in an essentialist formulation, the notion of an inherent national spirit. We will use Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's essay 'On German Architecture' (1772) as a starting point, and discuss how his interest in the idea of a 'Gothic' Germanic identity played out in the visual culture of the long nineteenth century i.e. from the Nazarenes to the Brücke. Indeed both formations, while separated by a hundred years, can be considered avant-garde 'brotherhoods', who sought to reinvigorate German art in opposition to academic artistic conventions.
We will discuss early organic theories of art as expressed in the written work of such thinkers as Johann Gottfried von Herder, as well as later philosophies of art (Arthur Schopenhauer, Julius Langbehn, Friedrich Nietzsche et al.) and the artistic reception of their ideas. Throughout, the course we shall investigate the enduring Romantic cult of Albrecht Dürer as the German artist par excellence, and his influence on both nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German artists, and society more generally. In addition, we will discuss the German Romantic 'longing for the south' (Italy), in many respects following Dürer's travels, and the more problematic artistic and critical reception of French culture. The course will cover a wide range of subject matter from the arboreal 'fairy-tale' landscapes of artists such as Caspar David Friedrich and Adrian Ludwig Richter, to the anti-urban 'back-to-nature' tradition of representing rural peasants as seen in the art of Wilhelm Leibl and Paula Modersohn-Becker, among others. Visual expressions of a 'free body culture' in both Symbolist and Expressionist artworks as part of the Life Reform Movement will also be considered, as will the sexual misogyny and anxiety of turn-of-the-century art in Munich, Vienna, and Berlin.
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| Course description |
Week 1
Introduction to the Course
Expressions of a National Identity in German Romantic Art
Seminar Reading:
Hans Belting, The Germans and Their Art: A Troublesome Relationship, New Haven and London, 1998
John Gage, Goethe on Art, London, 1980
Reinhold Heller, (ed.), Confronting identities in German art: myths, reactions, reflections, Chicago, 2003
Further Reading:
Françoise Forster-Hahn et al., Spirit of an Age: Nineteenth Century Paintings from the Nationalgalerie Berlin, London, 2001
Keith Hartley, Henry Meyrich Hughes, Peter-Klaus Schuster and William Vaughan (eds), The Romantic Spirit in German Art 1790-1990, exhibition catalogue, London, 1994
Robert Rosenblum, Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition: Friedrich to Rothko, New York: Harper and Row, 1975
Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory, London, 1995
William Vaughan, Romanticism and Art, London, 1994
William Vaughan, German Romantic Painting, New Haven and London, 1980
Week 2
The Patriotic Romanticism of Caspar David Friedrich and his Cultural Legacy
Seminar Reading:
Colin Bailey, Caspar David Friedrich, Winter Landscape, exhibition catalogue, London, 1990
Joseph Leo Koerner, Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape, London, 1990
Further Reading:
Colin Bailey, Caspar David Friedrich, Winter Landscape, exhibition catalogue, London, 1990
Hans Belting, The Germans and Their Art: A Troublesome Relationship, New Haven and London, 1998
Helmut Börsch-Supan, Caspar David Friedrich, New York, 1974
Françoise Forster-Hahn et al., Spirit of an Age: Nineteenth Century Paintings from the Nationalgalerie Berlin, London, 2001
Keith Hartley, Henry Meyrich Hughes, Peter-Klaus Schuster and William Vaughan (eds), The Romantic Spirit in German Art 1790-1990, exhibition catalogue, London, 1994
Robert Rosenblum, Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition: Friedrich to Rothko, New York: Harper and Row, 1975
Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory, London, 1995
William Vaughan, Romanticism and Art, London, 1994
William Vaughan, German Romantic Painting, New Haven and London, 1980
Week 3
The Fairy Tale World of Ludwig Richter, Moritz von Schwind and Alfred Rethel
Seminar Reading:
William Vaughan, German Romantic Painting, New Haven and London, 1980
Further Reading:
Françoise Forster-Hahn et al., Spirit of an Age: Nineteenth Century Paintings from the Nationalgalerie Berlin, London, 2001
Keith Hartley, Henry Meyrich Hughes, Peter-Klaus Schuster and William Vaughan (eds), The Romantic Spirit in German Art 1790-1990, exhibition catalogue, London, 1994
Robert Rosenblum, Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition: Friedrich to Rothko, New York: Harper and Row, 1975
Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory, London, 1995
William Vaughan, Romanticism and Art, London, 1994
Week 4
The German Longing for the South: Nazarenes and Deutschrömer
Seminar Reading:
Ingrid Ehrhardt and Simon Reynolds (eds), Kingdom of the Soul: Symbolist Art in Germany 1870-1920, exhibition catalogue, Munich, 2000
Keith Hartley, Henry Meyrich Hughes, Peter-Klaus Schuster and William Vaughan (eds), The Romantic Spirit in German Art 1790-1990, exhibition catalogue, London, 1994
Further Reading:
Hans Belting, The Germans and Their Art: A Troublesome Relationship, New Haven and London, 1998
Françoise Forster-Hahn et al., Spirit of an Age: Nineteenth Century Paintings from the Nationalgalerie Berlin, London, 2001
Reinhold Heller, (ed.), Confronting identities in German art: myths, reactions, reflections, Chicago, 2003
Robert Rosenblum, Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition: Friedrich to Rothko, New York: Harper and Row, 1975
William Vaughan, German Romantic Painting, New Haven and London, 1980
Week 5
Embracing the French Avant-Garde? A Crisis of German Artistic Identity (1860-1890)
Seminar Reading:
Beth Irwin Lewis, Art for All? The Collision of Modern Art and the Public in Late-Nineteenth Century Germany, Princeton, 2003
Further Reading:
Françoose Forster-Hahn, Imagining Modern German Culture 1889-1910, Washington, D.C., 1996, especially her own introduction and 'Constructing new histories: nationalism and modernity in the display of art', pp. 71-89; and the essay by Kenneth D. Barkin, 'The crisis of modernity 1887-1902', pp. 19-35.
Charles Harrison, Briony Fer (et al.), Modernity and Modernism, French Painting in the Nineteenth Century, London, 1993
Robert Jensen, Marketing Modernism in Fin-de-Siecle Europe, Princeton, 1994
Robin Lenman, 'Painters, patronage and the art market in Germany 1850-1914', Past and Present, 123 (1989), 109-40, and Artists and Society in Germany 1850-1914, Manchester, 1997
Charles McClelland, Prophets, Paupers, or Professionals? A Social History of Everyday Visual Artists in Modern Germany, 1850-Present, Bern, 2003
Irit Rogoff, (ed.), The Divided Heritage: Themes and Problems in German Modernism, Cambridge, 1991
Shearer West, Utopia and Despair: The Visual Arts in Germany 1890 - 1937, Manchester 2001
Week 6
Reading Week
Week 7
Late C19 Artist Colony Culture (Worpswede, Dachau etc)
Seminar Reading:
Gill Perry, Francis Frascina, and Charles Harrison, Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction, The Early Twentieth Century, London, 1993
Shearer West, Utopia and Despair: The Visual Arts in Germany 1890 - 1937, Manchester 2001
Further Reading:
Jill Lloyd, Van Gogh and Expressionism, New York, 2007
Nina Lubbren, Rural Artists' Colonies in Europe, Manchester, 1870-1910
Colin Rhodes, Primitivism and Modern Art, London, 1994
Week 8
Symbolist Fantasies 1: Berlin Secession
Seminar Reading:
Beth Irwin Lewis, Art for All? The Collision of Modern Art and the Public in Late-Nineteenth Century Germany, Princeton, 2003
Shearer West, Utopia and Despair: The Visual Arts in Germany 1890 - 1937, Manchester 2001
Further Reading:
Steven Ascheim, The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1890-1990, 1994
Ketil Bjornstad, The Story of Edvard Munch, 2005
Claude Cernuschi: "Sex and Psyche, Nature and Nurture, The Personal and the Political: Edvard Munch and German Expressionism" in Howe (ed), Edward Munch: Psyche, Symbol and Expression, 2001
Reinhold Heller, Munch: His Life and Work, 1984
Jeffrey Howe (ed), Edward Munch: Psyche, Symbol and Expression, 2001
Iris Mueller-Westermann and Merete Mazzarella, Munch: By Himself, 2005
Rosemarie E. Pahlke, Munch Revisited: Edvard Munch and the Art of Today, 2005
Sue Prideaux, Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream, 2005
John Zarobell et al, Edvard Munch's Mermaid, 2005
Week 9
Symbolist Fantasies 2: Munich and Vienna Secession
Seminar Reading:
Carl Schorske, Fin de Siècle Vienna, Politics and Culture, 1981
Peter Vergo, Art in Vienna, 1994 (3rd edition)
Further Reading:
Bram Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de- Siècle Culture, 1988
Wolfgang Fischer, Gustav Klimt and Emilie Floge: An Artist and his Muse, 1992
Gottfried Fliedl, Gustav Klimt 1862-1918: The World in Female Form, 1989
Sigmund Freud and Joseph Breuer, Studies on Hysteria any edition; including Penguin paperback
Peter Gay, Schnitzler's Century: The Making of Middle Class Culture, 1815- 1914, 2001
Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis, 1921
Tobias Natter and Gerbert Frodl, Klimt's Women, 2000
Tobias Natter (ed), The Naked Truth: Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka and Other Scandals, 2005
Christian Nebehay, Gustav Klimt: From Drawing to Painting, 1994
Susanna Partsch, Gustav Klimt: Painter of Women, 1994
Marie-Amelie Zu Salm-Salm (ed), Klimt, Schiele, Moser, Kokoschka: Vienna 1900, 2005
Carl Schorske, Fin de Siècle Vienna, Politics and Culture, 1981
Peter Vergo, Art in Vienna, 1994 (3rd edition)
Shearer West, Fin de Siècle: Art and Society in an Age of Uncertainty, 1993
Frank Whitford, Gustav Klimt, 1993
Week 10
The Romantic Roots of German Expressionism / Bauhaus (PART 1)
Seminar Reading:
Further Reading:
Peter Lasko,
August Wiedmann, Romantic Roots in Modern Art, 1979
August Wiedmann, The German Quest for Primal Origins in Art, Culture and Politics, 1900-33, 1995
Week 11
The Romantic Roots of German Expressionism / Bauhaus (PART 2)
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Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | Visiting students should have completed at least 3 History of Art courses at grade B or above, and we will only consider University/College level courses. **Please note that 3rd year History of Art courses are high-demand, meaning that they have a very high number of students wishing to enrol in a very limited number of spaces. These enrolments are managed strictly by the Visiting Student Office, in line with the quotas allocated by the department, and all enquiries to enrol in these courses must be made through the CAHSS Visiting Student Office. |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate detailed knowledge and critical understanding of the historical and artistic development of Romanticism.
- Demonstrate awareness of the broader contextual dimensions of German art and society, and the diverse attitudes of German artists and critics to 'Latin culture'.
- Have a secure understanding of the key issues concerning German cultural identity, and be able to relate how Expressionism connected to some of the ideals of Romanticism.
- Discuss in seminars and write in essays about challenging and demanding art historical and theoretical concepts, which inform a fuller aesthetic appreciation and critical understanding of the course material.
- Demonstrate skills of spoken communication for your 10-minute powerpoint presentation exercise. You will also develop your inter-personal skills, listening to and commenting on your colleagues' work, as well as points raised in discussion by the tutor.
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Reading List
General Reading List
These titles are highly recommended and are available in paperback or at a reasonable price. Check amazon.co.uk etc.
Hans Belting, The Germans and Their Art: A Troublesome Relationship, 1998
Joseph Leo Koerner, Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape, 2009
Beth Irwin Lewis, Art for All?: The Collision of Modern Art and the Public in Late-Nineteenth-Century Germany, 2003
William Vaughan, German Romantic Painting, 1994
For further reading see Syllabus |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Christian Weikop
Tel: (0131 6)51 4229
Email: |
Course secretary | Mrs Sue Cavanagh
Tel: (0131 6)51 1460
Email: |
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