Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Street, Dresden, 1908

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Street, Dresden, oil on canvas, 1908 (MoMA)

Speakers: Dr. Juliana Kreinik, Dr. Steven Zucker, Dr. Beth Harris

(bouncy piano music)

>> We're looking at a painting at the

Museum of Modern Art by
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.

It's Street Scene Dresden
and it dates to 1908.

>>Kirchen is known as
an expressionist artist.

That's his classification.

>> He would become part of a group

called Die Brucke.

>> Yes, The Bridge.

>> The Bridge, as they called themselves.

>> What did the bridge mean?

What was it a bridge to and from?

>> From the past to the future.

>> Well yes, from the past to the future,

but it refers really
directly to Nietzsche.

>> Really?

>> I didn't know that. I
didn't know that either,

but it makes it much more interesting.

>> Thus, speak Die Brucke.

The bridge from civilization
to the Uberwanch,

Crossing the bridge, it's a
journey of self-discovery,

of individual self-actualization.

>> There were so many German artists

and craftsmen that were
really interested in

Nietzsche at this moment, right?

>> Obsessed is a better word.

>> Yes, yes.

>> What was it about Nietzsche?

>> Well, he was interested in taking apart

ideas of morality which
constricted culture so much,

I think all over Europe
but especially in Germany.

I think the young artists, I think Kirchen

was not even 30 at this point,

they're all pretty young,

and they're really interested in renewal

and the new.

>> Germany was late coming to the

Industrial Revolution, right?

>> Yes.

>> There's a lot of
change that's happening

in a very compressed time period.

>>They, in the later 19th Century, really

tried to catch up to England and France

and they worked really hard to do that.

Then there was a lot
of growth really fast,

but there are all these culture morays

that they worked really
hard to break out of

and Nietsche was totally
influential and inspirational

because he posited all these
ways of breaking out of.

>> It was very constrictive, proper.

>> Accountable for..

>> Yes, yes so that you wouldn't be

proper and contained.

>> Even in this painting,
there is a kind of isolation

amongst those figures, isn't there?

>> Definitely.

>> Even though it's a
crowded, really dense scene;

this is a pretty wild painting really.

>> I have to say I know
that you like this painting.

>> I do; I love this painting.

>> I have always really not.

>> I love this painting. (laughter)

>> Right, so I want to
hear from both of you then.

>> Why do you not like this painting?

>> It feels very like
a man looking at women

on the street and I know that they're...

I don't know; I guess for me it doesn't

build all that much more
on the 19th Century,

on Munch's Street Scene
of Karl Johan Strasse.

>> Right, from 1892.

>> That kind of interest
in psychological angst

and alienation in the modern world

and using color to describe those things

and brush work.

This, as a symbolist
artist, I really like this.

>> So did the Germans by the way.

>> Yeah.

>> They really heroized him, right?

>> Then when I get to this and the colors

become more garish and more difficult,

the composition a little more disjointed,

the brush work more open,

I'm not sure how much this adds.

I guess there's something
uncomfortable to me

about the way that he's
looking at the women here.

>> For me, the color
and garishness is what

attracted me to it.

I love the distortion.

I love the green; I love the orange.

I love the orange tracing
around the woman's hat.

It's glowing.

I just love looking at that.

I feel like it's neon.

If you look again at
the entire composition,

I love things that kind of pop out

at different moments.

I think it is about
looking and it is about

voyeurism and it is about the male gaze.

If you look on the right
side of the painting,

I love that he's caught halfway

out of the composition.

De'Gaulle did that in 1872.

I think for me this
sort of feels very much

about isolation and German angst.

>> The point that you were
making about De'Gaulle

I thought was an interesting one

because in some ways

France is going through those issues

when De'Gaulle was painting and Germany is

a little bit later, but
that doesn't make this

not authentic,

an authentic expression of that moment.

I'm not saying that
they're the same thing,

but the issue is industrial alienation and

the issue of urban
alienation I think are both

very important issues in

both of those painter's work.

This is clearly a 20th Century work.

There are lessons that have learned and

freedoms that have been generated from

post-Impressionism and from other artists.

>> I think of Fauvism.

>> Exactly.

>> Just the coloration I
think for me is something

that makes it extremely
early 20th Century.

>> It's not the beauty of Fauvism.

>> No, it's not.

>> This is really a kind of aggressive.

>> I like that.

>> So Van Gogh's Night
Cafe, he wanted to give

the Night Cafe a sense
of darkness and misery

by means of red and green.

That's what Van Gogh said

20 or 30 years before this.

He's got that horrible pink
color in that painting.

>> Maybe the power here is the very thing

that you don't like which
is the women as subject.

>> Well, I know that he's doing images of

prostitutes on the street and I guess

that knowing that informs

my looking at this painting.

It starts to make me really
worried about the way

that modern historians
look at these images.

>> I think that his, because
I think of his prostitute,

the streetwalker scenes
as five years later.

>> He's in Berlin, right?

>> He's in Berlin and they're in like

Potsdam or Platts and Friedrichshafen,

those main city centers
and where the women...

That's a lot more
strident and the women are

definitely the focus of the male gaze.

There are a lot of men kind of circling

around the women.

Those are less interesting to me.

Also, I think just even
in terms of looking at

the color and composition
for some reason and I

know that a lot of people like those more.

His style is more developed

and he's more mature as an artist.

I like that this is more raw.

Kirchen, he's really
focusing on that authentic,

kind of direct engagement with the

experience of the city,

the electric, the movement.

>> A kind of constant
shift and change here

as if all of those voids,
that wonderful pink area,

is constantly changing and shifting as the

figures that define that space move.

>> I feel like he's
experimenting with something.

>> Could we see the
women here as sympathetic

in some way, maybe if I wasn't reading it

through the guise of those later images of

prostitutes on the street.

She does look out at us.

She's lit by the lights of the city.

When you said neon, I
could sort of feel that,

those kinds of lights maybe in the

dusk in the city.

She looks out at us.

>> Well, they don't look to me honestly

like prostitutes.

>> Right, I'm saying
they're bourgeois women,

but maybe there is something

sympathetic about her
if we don't look at her

through the lens of those later images.

>> I think there is.

I guess to me it just seems like

these isolated figures and that's what

attracts them to me.

Like it's a theater; if
you look at the side,

there's almost like a pillar figure,

of that male figure,

kind of holding the
picture together and it

pulls your eye in and he's right there and

he's sort of between you
and the female figures.

Then everything kind
of recedes behind that

diagonally to the left in the back.

You see the girl in the center stage.

>> What makes it theatrical?

>> I think the lighting and the way the

figures are arranged.

>> That could almost be limelight

coming from below.

What I love about it
is, although it's a city

and you have the slightest
trace of the trolley track,

there's no architecture.

The entire space is
defined by the occupation

of these figures or their
occupation in space.

In a sense, it's the city
defined by these people,

defined by space itself shaped

by this changing crowd
which I think is really

an interesting idea.

He's not using buildings.

He's not even really using intersections.

He's using people to define the space

and then in a sense to build a city out of

the people...

>> Out of the shifting masses.

This is Koenigstrasse in Dresden which is

a main thoroughfare of
shopping so there's a lot of

traffic and movement
and this is definitely

part of a very well-known
street and a very

well-known area and it's very populated.

>> In the second half of the 19th Century

when artists' painted street
scenes, like De'Gaulle

because this looks to
me like he's looking at

De'Gaulle, but there is more of a sense of

architecture and place.

>> Yes, there's nothing
here that's stable.

Everything here will be
different in a moment

and there's something sort
of wonderful about that.

>> Yeah. I think I like
also just looking at that

little girl and her big hat and her

ugly, kind of claw-like hand.

I think she's holding some kind of toy.

>> Or flowers maybe.

>> Or flowers or something,

but in the painting it really looks scary.

>> Yes, yes. There's also
the way that her legs

are slightly splayed and there's something

very ungainly.

>> Her hair is kind of
dripping down the sides

of her face.

>> Yes, that kind of inelegant.

Actually throughout the entire painting,

there's this really
interesting tension between

the effort and elegance in the dress

but then the ungainliness
or the aggression of

the representation.

This is sort of wonderful
sort of back and forth.

(bouncy piano music)