Editing Expressionism (section)

==Etymology and history==
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| image1            = Kollwitz.jpg
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| caption1          = [[Käthe Kollwitz]], ''[[Woman with Dead Child]]'', 1903, etching, [[Museum of Modern Art]]
| image2            = Wassily Kandinsky, 1903, The Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter), oil on canvas, 52.1 x 54.6 cm, Stiftung Sammlung E.G. Bührle, Zurich.jpg
| caption2          = [[Wassily Kandinsky]], ''[[The Blue Rider (painting)|Der Blaue Reiter]]'', {{circa}}1903
| image3            = Egon Schiele - Eduard Kosmack - 4702 - Österreichische Galerie Belvedere.jpg
| caption3          = [[Egon Schiele]], ''Portrait of Eduard Kosmack'', {{circa}}1910, oil on canvas, 100 × 100 cm, [[Österreichische Galerie Belvedere]]
| image4            = Macke, August - Promenade - Google Art Project.jpg
| caption4          = [[August Macke]], [[Promenade (Macke)|''Promenade'']], 1913, [[Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus]], [[Munich]]
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While the word expressionist was used in the modern sense as early as 1850, its origin is sometimes traced to paintings exhibited in 1901 in Paris by obscure artist Julien-Auguste Hervé, which he called ''Expressionismes''.<ref>John Willett, ''Expressionism''. New York: World University Library, 1970, p.25; Richard Sheppard, "German Expressionism", in ''Modernism: 1890–1930'', ed. Bradbury & McFarlane, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976, p.274.</ref> An alternative view is that the term was coined by the Czech art historian Antonin Matějček in 1910 as the opposite of [[Impressionism]]: "An Expressionist wishes, above all, to express himself... (an Expressionist rejects) immediate perception and builds on more complex [[psyche (psychology)|psychic]] structures... Impressions and mental images that pass through ... people's soul as through a filter which rids them of all substantial accretions to produce their clear essence [...and] are assimilated and condensed into more general forms, into types, which he transcribes through simple short-hand formulae and symbols."<ref>Cited in Donald E. Gordon, ''Expressionism: Art and Ideas''. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987, p. 175.</ref>

Important precursors of Expressionism were the German philosopher [[Friedrich Nietzsche]] (1844–1900), especially his [[philosophical fiction|philosophical novel]] ''[[Thus Spoke Zarathustra]]'' (1883–1892); the later plays of the Swedish dramatist [[August Strindberg]] (1849–1912), including the trilogy ''[[To Damascus]]'' (1898–1901), ''[[A Dream Play]]'' (1902), ''[[The Ghost Sonata]]'' (1907); [[Frank Wedekind]] (1864–1918), especially the "Lulu" plays ''Erdgeist'' (''Earth Spirit'') (1895) and ''Die Büchse der Pandora'' (''Pandora's Box'') (1904); the American poet [[Walt Whitman]]'s (1819–1892) ''Leaves of Grass'' (1855–1891); the Russian novelist [[Fyodor Dostoevsky]] (1821–1881);  Norwegian painter [[Edvard Munch]] (1863–1944); Dutch painter [[Vincent van Gogh]] (1853–1890); Belgian painter [[James Ensor]] (1860–1949);<ref>R. S. Furness, ''Expressionism''. London: Methuen, pp.2–14; Willett, pp. 20–24.</ref> and pioneering Austrian psychoanalyst [[Sigmund Freud]] (1856–1939).<ref name="EHGombrich" />

In 1905, a group of four German artists, led by [[Ernst Ludwig Kirchner]], formed [[Die Brücke]] (the Bridge) in the city of Dresden. This was arguably the founding organization for the German Expressionist movement, though they did not use the word itself. A few years later, in 1911, a like-minded group of young artists formed [[Der Blaue Reiter]] (The Blue Rider) in Munich. The name came from [[Wassily Kandinsky]]'s ''Der Blaue Reiter'' painting of 1903. Among their members were Kandinsky, [[Franz Marc]], [[Paul Klee]], and [[August Macke]]. However, the term Expressionism did not firmly establish itself until 1913.<ref>Richard Sheppard, p.274.</ref> Though mainly a German artistic movement initially<ref>Note the parallel French movement Fauvism and the English Vorticism: "The Fauvist movement has been compared to German Expressionism, both projecting brilliant colors and spontaneous brushwork, and indebted to the same late nineteenth-century sources, especially Van Gogh." Sabine Rewald, "Fauvism", In ''Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History''. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/fauv/hd_fauv.htm (October 2004); and "Vorticism can be thought of as English Expressionism." Sherrill E. Grace, ''Regression and Apocalypse: Studies in North American Literary Expressionism''. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989,  p. 26.</ref><ref name="EHGombrich" /> and most predominant in painting, poetry and the theatre between 1910 and 1930, most precursors of the movement were not German. Furthermore, there have been expressionist writers of prose fiction, as well as non-German-speaking expressionist writers, and, while the movement declined in Germany with the rise of [[Adolf Hitler]] in the 1930s, there were subsequent expressionist works.

Expressionism is notoriously difficult to define, in part because it "overlapped with other major 'isms' of the modernist period: with [[Futurism]], [[Vorticism]], [[Cubism]], [[Surrealism]] and [[Dadaism]]."<ref>Sherrill E. Grace, ''Regression and Apacaypse: Studies in North American Literary Expressionism''. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989,  p.26).</ref> Richard Murphy also comments, “the search for an all-inclusive definition is problematic to the extent that the most challenging expressionists such as [[Kafka]], [[Gottfried Benn]] and [[Döblin]] were simultaneously the most vociferous 'anti-expressionists.'"<ref>Richard Murphy, ''Theorizing the Avant-Garde: Modernism, Expressionism, and the Problem of Postmodernity''. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,1999, p. 43.</ref>

What can be said, however, is that it was a movement that developed in the early twentieth century, mainly in Germany, in reaction to the dehumanizing effect of industrialization and the growth of cities, and that "one of the central means by which expressionism identifies itself as an [[avant-garde]] movement, and by which it marks its distance to traditions and the cultural institution as a whole is through its relationship to [[Realism (arts)|realism]] and the dominant conventions of representation."<ref>Richard Murphy, p. 43.</ref> More explicitly, that the expressionists rejected the ideology of realism.<ref>Murphy, especially pp. 43–48; and Walter H. Sokel, ''The Writer in Extremis''. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1959,  especially Chapter One.</ref>

The term refers to an "artistic style in which the artist seeks to depict not objective reality but rather the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse within a person".<ref>''Britannica Online Encyclopaedia'' (February, 2012).</ref> It is arguable that all artists are expressive but there are many examples of art production in Europe from the 15th century onward which emphasize extreme emotion. Such art often occurs during times of social upheaval and war, such as the [[Protestant Reformation]], [[German Peasants' War]], and [[Eighty Years' War]] between the Spanish and the Netherlands, when extreme violence, much directed at civilians, was represented in propagandist [[popular print]]s. These were often unimpressive aesthetically but had the capacity to arouse extreme emotions in the viewer.{{Citation needed|date=March 2024}}

Expressionism has been likened to [[Baroque]] by critics such as art historian Michel Ragon<ref>{{cite book |first=Michel |last=Ragon |date=1968 |url=https://archive.org/details/expressionism00rago |url-access=registration |title=Expressionism |publisher=Heron |isbn=9780900948640 |quote=There is no doubt that Expressionism is Baroque in essence}}</ref> and German philosopher [[Walter Benjamin]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Benjamin |first=Walter |title=Origin of German Tragic Drama |url=https://archive.org/details/originofgermantr1998benj |url-access=registration |year=1998 |publisher=Verso |location=London |isbn=978-1-85984-899-9}}</ref>  According to [[Alberto Arbasino]], a difference between the two is that "Expressionism doesn't shun the violently unpleasant effect, while Baroque does. Expressionism throws some terrific 'fuck yous', Baroque doesn't. Baroque is well-mannered."<ref name="ArbasinoPedulla2000">{{cite journal |first1=Gabriele |last1=Pedullà |first2=Alberto |last2=Arbasino |author-link2=Alberto Arbasino  |url=http://www.libraweb.net/articoli3.php?chiave=543&rivista=23&articolo=200302301011 |title=Sull'albero di ciliegie – Conversando di letteratura e di cinema con Alberto Arbasino |trans-title=On the cherry tree – Conversations on literature and cinema with Alberto Arbasino |journal=CONTEMPORANEA Rivista di studi sulla letteratura e sulla comunicazione |date=2003 |quote=L’espressionismo non rifugge dall’effetto violentemente sgradevole, mentre invece il barocco lo fa. L’espressionismo tira dei tremendi «vaffanculo», il barocco no. Il barocco è beneducato (Expressionism doesn't shun the violently unpleasant effect, while Baroque does. Expressionism throws some terrific "Fuck yous", Baroque doesn't. Baroque is well-mannered.)}}</ref>