A brief analysis of portraiture in expressionism
CenChen MAPainting 2018
My personal painting theme mainly focuses on people, so I am very interested in portrait paintings. I want to know about the styles, materials and emotions of the painters. I hope that the understanding of the painters whose styles are expressionist can help the development of my own painting. I will express the characteristics and advantages of expressionist portrait works through the works of three painters.
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas.Expressionist artists sought to express the meaning of emotional experience rather than physical reality. Expressionism was developed as an avant-garde style before the First World War.
The first painter was Edvard Munch, Munch's parents and siblings died and fell ill in succession, depends on his own miserable experiences ,he wrote the so-called “Saint-Cloud Manifesto” in 1889, proclaiming, “No longer would interiors, people who read and women who knit, be painted. There should be living people who breathe and feel, suffer and love.” Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard writes that “reproductions never do Munch’s paintings justice.” And “Just as a mother, a tree, or a field exudes something unique, a soul if you like, Munch’s paintings do the same.” Munch’s original versions emit especially vibrant power. ( https://hyperallergic.com/394219/why-edvard-munch-began-painting-portraits-of-the-soul/)《The sick child》, in 40 years, he drew this theme six times repeatedly, because of the technique of expressionism, blurring the faces of the characters, can actually make people pay more attention to the atmosphere of the scene. Munch makes the picture a whole, can let the viewers as if feeling themselves in this room, in thin air, to watch the sad story. And his turbulent brush strokes add emotive power to his paintings. As a typical representative of expressionist painters, Edvard Munch allows the audience to directly feel his subjective emotional expression in his paintings. Munch characters often expression and sorrow or expressionless, character's appearances were complete, with comparative and intense lines and colors, concise summary exaggerated modeling, express their feelings and emotions, he was not interested in describing reality, he would be is the kind is full of emotional connotation. Munch's characters are appropriately placed in every space. No matter what kind of environment they are in, such as a room, a coffee shop or a park, the environment seems to be connected with the characters in his paintings, sharing the same breath and emotion. Make his paintings have a sense of balance and natural.
The sick child,1896
The second,was Arshile Gorky. In the paintings Gorky made from the mid-1920s to the early 1940s, Modern art's recent history is an episodic narrative. His personal history, especially memories of his mother, entwines with it. 《The Artist and his Mother》based on a faded photograph，enlarged to life-size, but with the figures simplified. (Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective, 2010,C Knight) Gorky lived through the horrors of the Armenian genocide, but never directly touched on the subject. But the painting, with his mother, had been repainted and altered for more than a decade. The relationship between the figure in the painting and the painter himself makes this work more special. His strokes are had sense of movement，but the whole picture was very peaceful. His picture can show the stillness of time. Gorky's works give people a feeling of incomplete because that is not what he pursues ，his painting subjects were from life, and add his own emotional experience condenses into those paintings. The style of Munch's paintings may tend to be intense, exaggeration and Gorky's figure painting are approachable and softer.
The artist and his mother,1926
The third is Anthony Cudahy. Many of the portraits he painted were just enlarged faces and body parts, and he used strong color contrast, often placing the figures in monochrome, and used the backlight as film, he also used the mysterious lighting. Some of his works were based on found photographys. Because his families were also artists, he would look for inspiration in 1970s old photographs which his mother took, and his paintings showed a combination of photography and painting.His brushwork reminds people of time-lapse photography, a kind of freeze frame and even a sense of eternity. He often presenting characters in the dark, creating a sense of mystery to the painting ，and making people guess what the characters are doing and in which place. He did not depict the details of those faces in his works, also placed more colors in the dark of paintings, that giving him a unique style. He limited the colors he could use ，makes his works less loud and he could explore simultaneous contrast and other minute color shifts on the canvas. His paintings of people and scenes are very ordinary, just like those things we can see in daily life ，but the color is very dreamy and unreality also have a attractive power，the combination gives a sense of being somewhere between the real and the dream. His works are very engaging and make people imagine the story behind these pictures.
TW，2014 Duo, 2018
In conclusion, what is important In figure painting ，not only the character, but also the relationship between the character and the environment and background, and whether the emotion of the character can permeate the whole picture. Although three artists living in different times, but all of them used their own language interpretation of figure paintings, an expressionist portrait can be strong ，soft, dreamy, also because of these works are based on the artist's experience and the emotion, make those paintings plentiful and characteristic. Meanwhile, make people can get through the time to have empathy.
Reference:
Badura-Triska, E. (2008). Bad Painting - good art ; Köln: DuMont.
Hyperallergic. (2019). Why Edvard Munch Began Painting Portraits of the Soul.
https://hyperallergic.com/394219/why-edvard-munch-began-painting-portraits-of-the-soul/
Hodin, J. (1996). Edvard Munch. New York: Thames & Hudson.
Cudahy, A. (2019). Anthony Cudahy. Milkwithtea.blogspot.com. http://milkwithtea.blogspot.com/2015/05/anthony-cudahy.html?m=1
Lawrence, J. (2004). Herrera, Hayden: Arshile Gorky.
Moma.org. (2019). MoMA | German Expressionism Featured Artists. https://www.moma.org/s/ge/curated_ge/artists.html
Arshile Gorky: a retrospective. (2010). Choice Reviews
