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German Artists' Writings in the XX Century - 6
Max Klinger
Malerei und Zeichnung (Painting and Drawing)
Part One: The Overall Context
Review by Francesco Mazzaferro
German Artists' Writings in the XX Century - 6
Max Klinger
Malerei und Zeichnung (Painting and Drawing)
Part One: The Overall Context
Review by Francesco Mazzaferro
[Original version: January 2015 - New Version: April 2019]
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Fig. 1) Max Klinger, Drawing and painting, The first edition of 1891, printed by Reusche in Leipzig. Source: http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0007/bsb00079784/images/index.html?seite=5&fip=193.174.98.30
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Painting
and drawing of Max Klinger (1857-1920) is a text
that discusses the role of graphic arts in relation to painting, also as part of
the aesthetic discussion between naturalists and neo-idealists in Germany, at
the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is a pamphlet of less
than fifty pages that the German painter, sculptor and engraver published in
1891, at the age of 34 years, for the private use of colleagues and friends [1].
To the author it was clear that it was a text aiming to state a precise thesis,
and that his arguments could be considered as 'arbitrary or exaggerated' [2].
The journal [3] and the collection of letters [4] by Klinger reveal that he had
already put in writing a few pages on the topic in 1883, at the age of 26, and
that a first complete draft of the pamphlet was completed in 1885. It is
therefore a reflection of his youth; when it was first published, the artist
was not yet at the peak of his career.
If we however still include this title,
published first in 1891, among the texts of German artists of the twentieth
century, it is because his writing had an extraordinary publishing success in
the first quarter of that century. After 1891, in fact, the text was published
eight more times before the Second World War, even in the Insel Library (Insel Bücherei), a book series of the famous
Insel publisher from Leipzig,
intended for a very broad distribution to the larger public. After the war, something
happened which is difficult to interpret: in East Germany the interest
continued unabated (with editions in 1950, 1978, 1980 and 1985, all in Leipzig,
by the eastern nationalized branches of the publishers Insel and Reclam), while
in West Germany the text by Klinger was no longer on the market, for decades. A
new interest for Painting and Drawing
emerged again in West Germany, and even outside of Germany, in the Eighties: also
in Italy, where two translations appeared in 1995 and 1996 and, more recently,
in the English world, with a translation in 2005.
What were the reasons for the fortune of
the writing in the first quarter of the twentieth century, and the uneven trend
between West and East Germany after the war? Even the art criticism of Klinger
does not seem to have identified specific factors of success and decline. We
will ask some questions and formulate some hypotheses. There are many aspects
that are not clarified and many interesting points which we must try to answer.
First, since the second half of the twenties the text continued to be the
subject of reading in Weimar Germany, although the interest in Max Klinger’s
art was already in decline. Second, the embarrassment of post-war West Germany against
the text of Klinger was perhaps due to a misunderstanding: he was accused of having
been the object of appreciation by nationalist critics, of not having been
classified by Nazi theorists as a degenerate artist and indeed of having been
seen by them as a 'proto-Nazi' artist [5]. Well, it is very doubtful that
Klinger was really an aggressive nationalist, while other very celebrated artists
in the postwar period (like Corinth and Nolde) certainly had been so. Third,
the publishing success before the war (and in eastern Germany, also in the
following decades) does not mean that there was a specific scholar interest of
the critics for the text. If in fact the publication attracted several comments
- collecting praise and at times being slated - and many monographs on Klinger
included a few pages on Painting and
drawing, in those years the text was specifically studied only by Ferdinand
Avenarius. The latter was the author of the essay "Klinger as a poet"
[6], published in 1917 and six more times until 1923. Merely in the late
twentieth century, the articles of often non-German art historians and scholars
of aesthetics multiplied. Fourth, if at the beginning of the twentieth century
the text of Klinger contributed to the revival of interest for graphics in
Germany (in line with what had already happened in France and England since
1850), only a few engravers and designers of the next generation (particularly
Käthe Kollovitz, Alfred Kubin, Georg Kolbe and Paula Modersohn-Becker) made
direct reference to Klinger and his text, and many of the major protagonists of
that rebirth (the Expressionist group of the Bridge, Emil Nolde, Paul Klee, Max Beckmann) showed coldness or
even expressed disagreement with the views contained therein. Fifth, the
Italian interest for Klinger comes from a masterful laudatory speech of Giorgio
de Chirico in 1920, who called him as the "modern artist par
excellence", but also originates from the attention that the German artist
had for Italy: a great modern classic, Klinger was perhaps better understood by
de Chirico, whose metaphysical art he inspired, than by German avant-garde. The
Italian text of de Chirico in the eighties became one of the major writings in
support of the rediscovery of Klinger in contemporary Germany.
For a modern reading of Painting and Drawing
As already mentioned, in the course of 1919
(a year before the artist's death) Painting
and drawing was re-released for the umpteenth time in the context of the
series of the Insel Library (Insel
Bücherei). It was his consecration and the possibility to be read by a mass
audience, given the large dissemination of that series. Re-reading the text today,
one hundred years later, allows a more modern interpretation than it has been
attempted to give so far.
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| Fig. 2) The second edition, published by the Verlag von Authur Georgi in Leipzig in 1895 |
Primarily, it becomes clear that Klinger endeavoured
to broaden the space of freedom of artists, enabling them to use different
techniques to achieve several purposes: in a phase of fierce contrasts between
naturalists and neo-idealists, between those who favoured form or content,
between those who were inspired by the French or the German tradition, Klinger
stated that both options were possible, as long as the artists were clear on
the differences between artistic languages, imposed by the use of different
technical means. Therefore, it was a text that legitimized the experimentation
of styles, both admitting an approach based on the pursuit of pure formal
beauty (l'art pour l'art) as well as
on conceptual experimentation, and reserving the first to painting and the
second to drawing.
A second perspective should also not be
ignored. Klinger raises the problem of how to achieve the goal of unity of art,
following the dictates of Gesamtkunst
(total art). The exhibition of the Vienna Secession of 1902 was entirely
devoted to Beethoven. Klinger (loving so viscerally that discipline to produce
a huge number of works dedicated to the great music of the nineteenth century)
participated with a polychrome statue of the great composer, made of ten
different materials. The work was related to the idea of Raumkunst, art space, and - we move to the present day - the
concept of today's installation.
Many critics did not like the statue of
Beethoven, and spoke of it as a monument to kitsch art (today it would be
considered as an iconic postmodern effigy and would beat all records in
auctions). Rodin saw it and said that had nothing to do with sculpture.
The fact that Beethoven was represented nude caused a scandal among viewers. Moreover,
the visual memory of the statue has been preserved since then as separate body from
the rest of the exhibition, and Klinger seems therefore to be the exponent of a
traditionalist monumentality. It is a deeply wrong idea: see the original
photos http://www.secession.at/beethovenfries/1902_d.html of the setting and the beautiful exhibition catalogue http://secession.nyarc.org/omeka/items/show/55). Do not believe that this was an impromptu attempt: Klinger began
work on his Beethoven in Paris in 1885. In those years he was venturing for the
first time with the problem of the art space (Raumkunst) and with specialization between painting and drawing, in
composition of the cycle of frescoes for the villa of one of his largest
collectors and patrons, the jurist Julius Albers from Berlin, for his villa
just outside the city. In the letters which the artist addressed precisely to
Albers, between 1883 and 1885, appear all aesthetic themes of Klinger’s modernity.
Moreover, there is a third interpretation
of Painting and drawing, one that de
Chirico captured very well in his laudatory speech of 1920: the very strong
link with the classical world - which had achieved the unity of the arts - as a
reference for a new synthesis by contemporary artists. Think of the fundamental
role that polychrome sculpture plays in the art of Klinger: a real attempt to
recover the original meaning of ancient Greek sculpture. See Christ on Olympus, at which Klinger
worked seven years [7]. The work was often read as another of the eccentricities
of the artist, but in fact has precise goals: it symbolically describes the
complexity of modern identity (there is a clear quote of Nietzsche's
Christ-Dionysus). In iconographic terms, the scene takes place almost
exclusively in a linear and horizontal sense, almost on one single level,
playing on the succession of statuesque figures and eliminating aspects of
perspective. Depth is produced by the contrast of complexion in naked figures
vis-à-vis the colours of dressed figures. The pictorial narrative, moreover, is
combined with frieze and sculpture, in an attempt to achieve the same effects
of total art described in Painting and
drawing (the latter is not visible in the below detail picture, which cuts
out the decoration beneath).
| Fig. 3) The third edition of 1899, also published by the Verlag von Authur Georgi in Leipzig |
In 1897 Gauguin painted the picture "WhereDo We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?" It is a work created in
a very distant location, in Tahiti, but nonetheless quite similar, in terms of
both contents and form, to Klinger’s poetic: the search for identity among
different cultures, the use of symbols and the horizontal reading of the narration,
overcoming the strict rules of perspective and using colours to represent depth.
This sense of horizontal, linear, classic,
all in the foreground narrative, in which the sequencing of the figures is a pure
alternation of shape and colour, is typical of monumental Klinger. Now think of
the Flowering of Greek culture, the
huge fresco that decorated the Aula Magna of the University of Leipzig until
the bombing of the last war: the photo below, taken from a publication of 1909 by
Paul Schumann [8] that I purchased on the antiquities market, is at my
knowledge the only colour photo of the fresco available on the web. Or think of
Labour, wellness, beauty, another
fresco for the town hall of Chemnitz - there is also something of Pompei’s
painting in the gestures of the figures in the foreground - the realization of
which engaged the last decade of his life. Klinger applied the technique of
classical frieze, painting with sculptural traits, at regular intervals, even
here on one floor.
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| Fig. 4) Max Klinger, The flowering of Greek culture, Fresco in the Great Hall of the University of Leipzig (20 meters long and 6 high, destroyed during the Second World War) (1909) |
This is the reading of Painting and drawing that we must adopt today: that of a conscious
attempt by Klinger to pursue a compromise between modern and ancient. In those
years, albeit following certainly different languages, it was Cézanne himself toseek the same result, through a narrative also relying on the display of
figures along horizontal and vertical lines, combining geometric space with a
revival of neo-classicists schemes.
This interpretation also allows us to
consider the text of Klinger as one of the earliest attempts by modern painters
throughout Europe to recover a direct relationship with classical art in
theoretical terms. I am thinking not only to Germany (of course, the reference is to the manual of Lovis Corinth Learning to paint of 1908, already reviewed in this blog) but also to France (the
theoretical writings of Maurice Denis, especially "Définition du
neo-traditionnisme" 1890 and "de Gauguin and de Van Gogh au
classicisme" of 1909, just republished [9]). What is common to these
authors is that they all paid long stays in Paris and Rome.
There are two wrong readings of Painting and drawing, which have often marked
the critical perspective of contemporaries. The first one is the idea of
interpreting the text only as a mere auxiliary comment to the graphic work of
Klinger, not realizing that the writing had a more general value, had its
autonomy from the art pieces and moreover did not take care of drawing only. Moreover,
as we shall see, indeed Klinger often did not adhere strictly to his own
precepts, that would impose a stricter division between genres and techniques.
The second one is that Painting and drawing was an ode to the Germanness of art.
Unfortunately, in the age of nationalism that was leading to the First World
War, almost all German critics ended up in that corner. For Klinger, it was a
trap: fifteen years afterwards, as already mentioned, the Nazis celebrated him while
at the same time condemned other forms of modern art as a form of so-called “degenerate
art”, and this spoiled for decades the reputation of the artist, wholly
innocent.
If you avoid these mistakes, it becomes
easy to find out that Painting and
drawing - promoting the opening of new spaces of freedom to the artists – was
read probably in function of what more revolutionary is actually contained in
it: the theory of conceptual and metaphysics art that Klinger assigned only to
the domain of drawing (but which he also practiced in painting, not surprisingly
being considered a symbolist painter).
The generation immediately following that
of Klinger (I refer to the artists of the varied movement that was German
expressionism) may have perhaps avoided admitting (largely for ideological
reasons) the debt contracted against him. But we face the typical attitude of
the adolescent who rejects his father, only to rediscover him in the later age
of maturity. The vicissitudes of the thirties, and in particular the
persecution which avant-garde painters suffered by Nazism, will however prevent
that later artists would gain the necessary distance, always required to
rebuild a line of continuity with their past.
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| Fig. 5) The fourth edition, dated 1913, published by Thieme Verlag in Leipzig |
Max Klinger, a modern German
Max Klinger was one of the most educated
German artists. In him we grasp the dialogue with the entire set of fine arts
(he was a painter, sculptor and a drawer), with music (especially Beethoven,
Brahms - of which he was a friend -, Schumann, Wagner; he was himself a
musicologist and a good pianist) and with philosophy (Lessing, Nietzsche,
Schopenhauer; on the latter, he wrote that the daily reading of his works had
accompanied his artistic ripening). He participated actively in the renewal of
German art, since the establishment in Berlin, in 1892, of the Group of Eleven,by Walter Leistikow; with him and the three major German Impressionists, MaxLieberman, Lovis Corinth and Max Slevogt, he joined the Berlin Secession in
1899, although not being an impressionist himself. He was a corresponding
member of the Secession of Munich and that of Vienna. He had, since the time of
his education, intensive contacts with artists abroad, first in Scandinavia and
Belgium and then in France, and spent long periods of his life in France and
Italy.
For the Italian public, who knows him well
[10], Klinger was especially one of Germany's most passionate lovers of Italian
art. He was one of the "German Romans". Indeed, in the footsteps of
the great artists of the previous generation, Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901),
Anselm Feuerbach (1829-1880) and Hans von Marées (1837-1887), he lived in Rome
between 1888 and 1893. He travelled a lot in our country; on behalf of the Deutscher Künstlerbund (the German
Association of the artists, created by Walter Leistikow in 1903 to expand to
the entire Germany the reformer design of the Berlin Secession) he bought the Villa Romana in Florence, an
establishment that continues today to welcome German artists in Italy (the
first winners of the scholarship were Max Beckmann and Käthe Kollwitz).
At his death, in 1920, a young Giorgio de
Chirico - then thirty-two - composed a laudatory speech which has remained
memorable, even in the German world. The text was originally published in the
journal of art and literature "Il Convegno". "He was a painter,
sculptor, engraver, philosopher, writer, musician and poet. He left a book of
thoughts on drawing and painting. He wrote numerous essays and writings on
ancient and modern art. (...) Klinger was the modern artist par excellence.
Modern not in the sense that is given today to this word, but in the sense of a
conscious man, who feels the legacy of centuries of art and thought, and can
clearly see in the past, present and in himself." [11]
Max Klinger, a German nationalist?
The judgment by de Chirico is striking,
because - already in 1920 - he identified modernity, even if inserted in a
substantial continuity with the past, as one of the characteristics of Klinger.
And it is just of the last few weeks the publication of a comprehensive
monograph by Marsha Morton on "Max Klinger and culture Wilhelmine. On the
threshold of the German modernism" [12], which documents very carefully
the revolutionary nature of the art (and in particular the graphic production) by
Klinger, compared to all the dogmas of the Germany of the late nineteenth
century. Ms Morton had already published in 1995 an essay on "Painting and
Drawing"; it is a text that will be of great help to understand the
history and the context of the pamphlet [13].
Klinger was extremely popular in his years
and was the object of cult, as really very well explained by Elizabeth
Pendleton Streicher [14]. In the early years of the twentieth century, it was
normal to compare him to Michelangelo and Leonardo, Beethoven and Wagner and to
define him as the by large greatest artist of his time [15]. In the year of
publication of Painting and Drawing,
1891, two major exhibitions were dedicated to him in Munich; in the previous
year, Wilhelm Bode, the director of the National Gallery in Berlin (today
called Bode Museum), had called him and his fellow painters Swiss-German Geyger
and Stauffer-Bern [16] as the "renovators of German graphic".
However, often the tone of appreciation was
influenced by the prevailing nationalism in those years: so, despite being a
great intellectual open to the world and obviously influenced by other
cultures, Klinger was defined as "the most German of German artists"
by German impressionist painter Lovis Corinth, that dedicated to him the "Speech
on German art" held for students of the University of Berlin in January
1914. The text of the speech of Corinth, published in Leipzig in March 1914,
was a hymn to nationalism as a criterion of art analysis. "It is often discussed
and one hears being affirmed that art is international. There are few - and I am
among them - saying that art is instead national, at the highest grade. I
believe that, as well as language and people are by themselves each different
in their race, so also the noblest occupation of the men - and it is,
undoubtedly, art - should be characterized according to the nation." [17]
A few years later the art historian Willy
Pastor (1867-1933), the author of a monograph of three hundred pages on Klinger
in 1918 [18], and an art critic of open sympathies for the intellectual nationalist
and anti-modernist German movement called "Völkische Bewegung" (Popular Movement), used these terms on
the Pietà, one of the most important
Roman paintings of Klinger, lost in the bombing of Dresden: "In this
spirit, another masterpiece, even if a different one, is the Pietà by Klinger.
It is a 'clear and cold' work, to use Hindenburg’s words, full of pride, which
could be well applied to this paintin [19]." It is a lexicon of war, which is explained by history: the First
World War was not yet over. If the work contained a clear quotation of the predella with the dead Christ by Holbein
in Basel, it also had clear Italian influences (unquestionably, Mantegna. Of
Mantegna, Klinger wrote in a letter of 1885 to Albers that it was one of the very
few painters whom really interested him) [20], that is of a country that - at
that time - was still at war against Germany. Even in the lexicon Pastor takes
deliberately German accents, leaving aside any Italian tone.
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| Fig. 6) Max Klinger, Pietá, 1889 ((already in Dresden, it was destroyed during the Second World War) Photo by Kirstein, Gustav - Max Klingers Die Welt, Berlin, Furche Verlag, 1917 https://archive.org/stream/dieweltmaxklinge00kirsuoft#page/n41/mode/2up |
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| Fig. 7) Hans Holbein the Younger, Dead Christ in the grave, 1521 |
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| Fig.8) Mantegna, Dead Christ (ca 1475-1478) |
But the "nationalist" reading of Klinger’s
painting is also explained by a deeper categorization that is typical of those
years and that the sociologist Norbert Elias has described masterfully in his
works, especially in the essay on the "process of civilization": the
idea, present both in France and in Germany, that the two countries would follow
completely different, and even opposed, models of culture, and that therefore
their political and military opposition reflected a different sense of social
norms: the 'civilization' in France (linked to compliance with collective norms
of good behaviour) and the 'culture' in Germany (linked to the respect of the
philosophical principles of what is good by itself). Following this logic, the
French art was linked to the concept of ''art
for art" and the German art instead to philosophical inspiration. On
the French side, this theorem was confirmed in two essays of Baudelaire: "The Art philosophique" and "Notes diverses sur L'Art philosophique"
of 1868, in which he attacked Peter von Cornelius (1783-1867) and German
contemporary artists for their philosophical art, which "sought to replace
the books and had become a rival of the press in the teaching of history and
moral philosophy." [21]
Paul Kühn (1866-1912), author of another
monograph on Klinger in 1907, applied the same arguments of Baudelaire – symmetrically,
but this time from a German angle - commenting on the two major Roman paintings
of Klinger (the Pietà and the Crucifixion) versus the previous ones of
the Paris period (for example, The Judgment of Paris). "Abandoning the
Hellenistic world of the beauty of the time in Paris, Klinger leads with these
two paintings to the sphere of spiritually purified humanity. In Paris, the joy
of the senses. Here, mental and spiritual energy, the power of the German way
of life and a number of figures with distinctive strongly characterized
individual features, a monumental spiritual beauty, which becomes pure and
mature through sorrow and the toughest life experiences. These are the 'most
Germans' jobs of Klinger; we must put them to the side of the Apostles of Dürer
and the Pietà of Grünewald. The influence of Mantegna and Florentine
Quattrocento did well to two paintings, strengthening them and stressing the
sense of form." [22]
This definition of the 'nationalist'
Klinger remained impressed in subsequent generations, after his death. Very
early, for example, Nazi theorists took possession of his memory, referring to
his style (seen in line with the German tradition) as 'Arian', although he had shared
many artistic achievements in his life with great Jewish intellectuals (Max Liebermann
and the Cassirers, for example). Ideologically, Klinger was exclusively assimilated
to the area of intellectual reference used by the Nazis: romanticism, Wagnerism,
and Nietzsche. What was left out were the French realism, secessionist symbolism,
the influence of Darwin and Freud and many other factors considered
inhomogeneous to the regime theories.
Moreover, the Nazis appropriated even the
great spirits of German cosmopolitanism: Kant, Lessing, Schiller and Goethe. In
the case of Klinger, we can say that this is one of the rare cases of modern
art that the regime did not mark as “degenerate”, but rather promoted. Thus,
while in 1937 was opened the infamous series of exhibitions on “degenerate art”,
in the same year was held in Leipzig - his hometown - a retrospective exhibition
of Klinger. The artist suddenly found himself opposed (like he could not
imagine in his lifetime) to colleagues as Liebermann (with whom he had worked
closely), Corinth (who had defined him as 'the most German of Germans') and
Beckmann (who for the first had been housed in the Villa Romana in Florence, as
the winner of the scholarship by the German Association of Artists).
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| Fig. 9) The catalogue of the retrospective exhibition on Klinger, 1937 in Leipzig, in the centenary of the Museum of Fine Arts |
After the war, a very peculiar situation arose.
Klinger continued to benefit in Italy of the modernist praise by de Chirico.
Even in East Germany, Klinger did not seem to encounter problems: a first
retrospective was dedicated to him at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin in
1957, the centenary of his birth. In West Germany, however, for decades art
critics preferred to remain silent or speak in a very prudent way on him. The
artist compared only to Michelangelo fifty years before completely disappeared
from the radar screen of art criticism. The argument was indeed accepted that
he did not belong anymore to the German art of the twentieth century.
When, for example, Germany presented the
first major exhibition on the art of the twentieth century to the German Museum
of Modern Art in New York in 1957 - an important exhibition for the acceptance
of German art in the United States only one decade after the war, from which
also arose a keen interest of American collectors for German art - an important
section was dedicated to graphics, one of the highlights of expressionism. Now,
it is sure that before Painting and
drawing the interest in art printmaking in Germany was very low, and that
only afterwards it became one of the preferred domains for experimental art. In
the catalogue of New York it is recognized, in some way, that at the origin of
the rebirth of German graphics at the beginning of 1900, there had to be above
all Klinger, but in a prudent and almost embarrassed way, referring to him only
to praise his technical skills, and together with others free of any suspicion:
"in Germany, the extensive revival of interest in the graphics materialised
at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century when, in Dresden, the
first group of Expressionists [editor's note: the Bridge, Die Brücke ] returned to engraving on wood, the method by which the
history of graphic design had begun. Four painters of the previous generation
[editor’s note: Klinger, Liebermann, Slevogt and Corinth] had worked frequently
as engravers and lithographers. Today, the hallucinatory world of silent nightmares
of Max Klinger seems outdated, but his technical skill as an engraver on metal
astonished his contemporaries and certainly influenced the early work of Paul
Klee." [23]
The rediscovery of Klinger in recent decades
In our time, the judgment of De Chirico on
Klinger as "modern artist par excellence" is widely shared. The
exhibitions in the fiftieth anniversary of his death (in 1970, in Leipzig in East
Germany, in Bremen in West Germany) have allowed to rediscover his affinity
with Surrealism (Dalí, Ernst), and the judgment of de Chirico has helped to renew
his image also in Germany. In the 1980s exhibitions have multiplied (Monaco,
Vienna, Kiel, Hildesheim). In 1992 the Städel in Frankfurt hosted a major
retrospective, with a beautiful catalogue. After unification in 1989, Leipzig
continued to host major exhibitions dedicated to him, in 1995, in 2007 and 2011
and became the largest centre for studies on Klinger, along with the nearby
Naumburg, the town where Klinger had lived the last part of his life and where
his house was converted into a museum [24]. In 2002 was created the Association
of Friends of Max Klinger [25], a body which in 2008 published, among other
things, a complete bibliography, in a volume entitled "Max Klinger. The paths
towards a revaluation" [26]. In 2011, the Klinger Forum was created [27].
Today Klinger has been rightly relocated in mainstream German art and is seen,
along with Corinth and artists of his generation, as one of the noble fathers
of the modern era of Weimar art, and as one of the great inspirers of
surrealist avant-garde. At the same time, he is considered the true heir of the
tradition of the nineteenth century German painting, very re-evaluated today. At
the retrospective exhibition in Frankfurt in 1992, for example, the emphasis
was placed on the artist's willingness to celebrate - in painting, sculpture
and drawing - the great musical culture of the nineteenth century and represent
the key neo-romantic myths and classical iconography; therefore he was not read
as the first of the moderns, but as the last of the ancients.
A German cosmopolitan
In my opinion the definition of Klinger as
the "most German" painter and the description of the Roman paintings
as the "most German" works are an unjustified deformation - through a
nationalist telescope - of what Klinger thought. The interpretation of Klinger
as a champion of Arian art is in particular absolutely specious, and Klinger
never imagined he would be seen like this; there is not a single anti-Semitic argument
in his writings, in a world where it was frequent to find them (think about
Nolde’s memoirs). Indeed, the last page of Painting
and drawing contains a phrase proving the absence of any racist logic:
"The artists of Egypt and Greece, of Japan and of the Renaissance had a
precise yet independent understanding of the human form in all its simplicity,
which has after all remained unchanged for millennia and which exhibits such
slight differences from race to race, that these can be expressed with only the
most minimal adjustments to its dimensions." [28]
There is no doubt that he shared with other
artists of his time the wish of strengthening German art, in a only a few
decades before newly reunified Germany, and that his vision of art reflected
(obviously, at that time) the idea of the natural existence of national art schools.
On the other hand, it is absolutely clear that, when he moved to Paris in 1888,
he was driven by a huge interest in the culture of the country, not only in the
field of visual arts, but also the literature (for example, the French
naturalism) and culture in general. To demonstrate his international vision,
during the years of training Klinger belonged to a circle of Scandinavian artists
and writers active in Germany (including Christian Krohg, with whom he studied
in Karlsruhe; he will be the future master of Edvard Munch) with whom he was delighted
to read French literature, even before it was translated in German [29]. In his
journal, the Parisian pages of October 1883 reveal curiosity and critical
thinking: here we read, for example, of his discovery "of a fifty year old
painter, unknown in Germany, of whom some of the first works could be exchanged
with Menzel: Degas" [30].
The pages of the journal also reveal that (during
the stay in Paris) he was personally victim of a series of nasty
anti-Prussian bullying (similar to what happened to Corinth, Nolde and
Leistikow, who talked about it in their memoirs). The French public was operating
a stupid retaliation action on individuals, to take revenge for the German
victory over Napoleon III and the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine to the
German Empire.
In a letter to the Danish philosopher and
critic Georg Brandes (1842 -1927) - one of many Scandinavian intellectuals who
were resident in Berlin in those years - Klinger admitted that the wrongs he suffered
in Paris had reduced sharply his sympathies for France and that even the
French Impressionists did not fascinate him that much anymore. He asked himself
with some concern if he was becoming a chauvinist. He made this confession to a
personality of European culture with strong intellectual links to France, not to
a well-known representative of the nationalist German culture, almost like
asking to be corrected.
Here is what he writes:
Paris,
May 13, 1884
Distinguished
Doctor (G. Brandes)
These are the
words of a deeply disappointed man, that on one occasion apostrophes the French
as "anti-Prussian" [32] and on another one seems to dispute with the
poet Laforgue, because he is defining France as a "nation of
painters." [33] Laforgue was a French poet who lived in Berlin; the German
artist knew him well, as he wrote in France on Klinger, in terms extremely
appreciative, considering him as a genius. [34] And yet, I do not seem to have found traces of any truly
aggressive nationalism (unlike with other painters) in his writings. There is
indeed an important episode in the opposite direction. Many years later, in
1911, the German painter Carl Vinnen (1863-1922) promoted a "Protest of
German artists" [35] against the negative influence exerted by the French art
on the German one. On that occasion, he mentioned Leibl, Thoma, Klinger and
Böcklin as examples of great artists who, despite having stayed in Paris a few
years for study, had kept being ‘true Germans’. However, Klinger did not join
the protest, although he did not even signed the counter-manifesto promoted by
Paul Cassirer [36]. But the authors of the counter-manifesto mentioned several
times - to support their case - the absence of the signature of Klinger in the nationalist
manifesto.
Even in the years of the First World War
there seems to be little evidence that Klinger has engaged in forms of war
propaganda, as it would have been very easy for him, given his popularity in
those years. Instead (being no longer able to travel through Europe) he retired
to Naumburg, a provincial town where he had set up a new studio. From there he
continued to write to friends and colleagues. True, he rejoiced at the news of
the fall of Antwerp and fantasizes about a forthcoming invasion from there to
England [37].Yet, shortly after, on December 7, 1915, in a letter he cited the German
peace activist Bertha von Suttner, Nobel Prize for Peace, and her famous writing
"Lay Down Your Arms!" [38], the first manifesto of Europe’s peace
movement. So, he hoped the war would end soon.
1918-1920 were terrible years for Germany. Klinger’s
world fell completely apart. One of his latest artwork was the fresco Labour, wellness, beauty, finished in
1918. A very optimistic message, of
which nothing was however materialising. The last page of the collection of Max
Klinger's letters published by Hans Wolfgang Singer in 1924 shows his last
letter of 23 November 1919, followed by the scribbles in which it had been
written by the semi-paralysed artist, after the stroke who will lead to his
death in a few months. Well, even in the letters of these terrible years I have
not found anything that would really justify the ideological ostracism he suffered
in West Germany after the war.
I may of course be wrong. Studies are of
course continuing. From the point of view of the sources of the history of art,
it is now announced the forthcoming publication of the entire correspondence
(6300 letters in DVD and 370 letters in a volume) by Renate Hartleb, after
archival research that have been the result of a lifetime study. Singer's
edition contained only 175 letters. Therefore, we may find out very soon a lot
more about what the artist wrote in those years.
 |
| Fig. 10) The last page of Max Klinger's letters published by Hans Wolfgang Singer in 1924 |
In a way, I think indeed that Klinger had
created - perhaps unconsciously – a Franco-German aesthetics. He entrusted to
painting the natural characteristics that prevailed in French culture, and to drawing those idealistic features typical of the German culture [39]. It was
an attempt, perhaps too advanced for its time, and that was not understood. One
of the greatest scholars of painting and drawing, Elizabeth Pendleton
Streicher, have indeed noticed that few of his contemporaries were able to
understand the very complex aesthetic position of the artist, who was for this reason
exposed to criticism contradictory. "Because Klinger never fit neatly into
one camp or another, he served as a useful pawn in the vituperative critical
wars of the day, as artists, critics, museum officials, dealers, and collectors
debated the relative merits of Germanic traditions, the new French paintings,
the continued viability of the academies, the aspirations of the various
secessionist groups, and the desirability of a national artistic identity. Klinger's
art seems always to have inspired contradictory reactions, from criticism
identifying him as a card-carrying revolutionary responsible for the decline of
contemporary morals, to panegyrics claiming him as a genius in the Renaissance
tradition who represented the salvation of German art. In a paradoxical
synergism at the end of the [nineteenth: note of the editor] century, these two
positions came together in the myth of Klinger as neoromantic, misunderstood
genius." [40]
Just to try to 'quantify' what economists
call home bias, i.e. the tendency to take
first and foremost a national home view despite the possible alternatives
available, I did a simple exercise, making use of the index included in the
Italian edition edited by Michele Dantini. I tried to list by nationality the artists
mentioned in Painting and drawing. It
is hardly surprising that the majority of those artists (eleven out of
nineteen) is German. The artists of reference are, however, Albrecht Dürer and
Francisco Goya, cited five times each; Raffaello Sanzio, with four citations
and Luca Signorelli, Rembrandt and von Menzel, each with two quotes. True,
there are no French Impressionists, but even no German ones [41]. Indeed it can
be noted that, with the exception of the German von Menzel and the English
Richard Caton Woodville, there are no quotations from contemporary artists.
Therefore, the argument by de Chirico is fully confirmed that Klinger followed
a model of modernity based on the continuity with the past.
One last observation. From 1905 onwards, Klinger
spent enormous energy for the Villa Romana in Florence. His own was a project
to ensure a permanent dialogue between German modern art and Italian classical
one, and to ensure - through that dialogue - the universality of art. Klinger
fought to ensure that the project would not die at the entry of Italy into
World War I, in 1915, as an enemy of Germany. The correspondence shows that the
Roman Villa has remained the central project of his work as a promoter of
dialogue between artists, until his death.
End of Part One
NOTES
[1] Klinger, Max - Malerei und Zeichnung, Leipzig, Reusche, 1891, p.46: The digital version is visible at http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0007/bsb00079784/images/
[2] All quotes are taken from the English
translation by Fiona Elliott and Christopher Croft: Klinger, Max - Painting and
drawing, Birmingham, Ikon, 2005. The quote is on page 29.
[3] Klinger, Max – Gedanken und Bilder aus der Werkstatt des werdenden Meisters
(Thoughts and pictures from the workshop of the master in his education years),
edited by H Heyne, Leipzig, Koehler & Amelang, 1925, p. 115. By pure luck,
I purchased a copy in an antiquarian bookshop in Helsinki.
[4] Briefe
von Max Klinger aus den Jahren 1874 bis 1919 (Letters by
Max Klinger from 1874 to 1919), edited by Hans Wolfgang Singer, Leipzig, Verlag
E. A. Seemann, 1924, page 232.
[5] Clarke, Jay A. - Neo-Idealism,
Expressionism, and the Writing of Art History, in: Art Institute of Chicago
Museum Studies, Vol. 28, No. 1, Negotiating History: German Art and the Past
(2002), pp. 24-37+107-108 (http://teacherweb.com/MA/LexingtonPublicSchools/HighschoolMacklisK/Neo-Idealism-and-Expressionism.pdf)
[6] Avenarius, Ferdinand - Max Klinger als Poet. Mit einem Briefe Max
Klingers und einem Beitrage von Hans W. Singer (Max Klinger as a Poet. With a letter by Max Klinger and a contribution by Hans W. Singer), Munich,
Kunstwart, 1917 (https://archive.org/stream/maxklingeralspoe00aven#page/n5/mode/2up)
[7] Tumasonis, Elisabeth, Klinger’s
Christ on Olympus: The Confrontation between Christianity and Paganism, in
RACAR: revue d'art canadienne / Canadian Art Review, Vol. 20, No. 1/2 (1993),
pp. 83-97. See: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/42630521?sid=21105623201003&uid=2&uid=3737864&uid=4
[8] Picture taken from Schumann, Paul, Max Klingers Wandgemälde für die Aula der
Universität Leipzig, (Max Klinger’s fresco for the assembly hall of the
Leipzig University), Leipzig, Seemann Verlag, 1909
[9] Denis, Maurice, Le ciel et l’Arcadie. Écrits et propos sur l’art, Paris, Hermann
Éditeurs, 2014, pp. 237
[10] In Italy, three exhibitions were
held in 2014: one in Bologna (“Max Klinger. The unconscious of reality” see: http://www.genusbononiae.it/index.php?pag=323), one in Sesto Fiorentino (“Nordic
Nightmares and Mediterranean myths. Max Klinger and symbolist engraving in
Central Europe” see: http://www.eventiintoscana.it/evento/incubi-nordici-e-miti-mediterranei-max-klinger-e-lincisione-simbolista-mitteleuropea-sesto-fiorentino-firenze ) and the third one in Rovigo, as
part of an exhibition on the broader influence of northern Europe on Italian
art, entitled "The Nordic obsession" (http://www.mostraossessionenordica.it/). A major retrospective on Klinger
was held in Ferrara in 1996, and on that occasion were organized conferences on
him and important musical events. See: (http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/1996/marzo/25/Klinger_maestro_del_Simbolo_co_0_96032512167.shtml). In recent years in Italy, there were
exhibitions on Klinger in San Donato Milanese in 2000 (http://www.bookdepository.com/Max-Klinger-Opus-fabulosum-Sogno-mito-e-realt%C3%A0-Opere-grafiche-della-Fondazione-Antonio-Mazzotta-Catalogo-della-mostra-San-Donato-Milanese-2000-Tulliola-Sparagni/9788820213985), in Brescia in 2001 (http://www.incisione.com/apparati/mostre_2001.html), in Mantua and Bolzano/Bozen in
2002 (http://www.incisione.com/apparati/klinger_chiari.html), again in Bologna in 2002 (http://www.undo.net/it/mostra/11954), in Bologna and Merano/Meran in
2003 (http://www.worldcat.org/title/max-klinger-erotische-einblicke-erotic-confessions-visioni-erotiche-sammlung-siegfried-unterberger-und-museum-der-bildenden-kunste-leipzig/oclc/82462156), in Trent in 2005 (http://www.romanzieri.com/archives/001129.php), in Legnano in 2006 (http://www.maremagnum.com/libri-antichi/max-klinger-brahmsphantasie-opus-xii-diciotto-rare-prove-di/138808810), in Brescia in 2007 (http://www.incisione.com/apparati/comunicato_228.pdf), in Udine in 2008 (http://ricerca.gelocal.it/messaggeroveneto/archivio/messaggeroveneto/2008/12/12/NZ_13_SPEA2.html) and in Florence in 2012 (http://www.firenzetoday.it/eventi/mostre/sirena-max-klinger-palazzo-pitti.html).
[11] De Chirico,
Giorgio - Max Klinger in: Klinger, Max – Pittura e disegno, edited by Michele
Dantini with an essay by Giorgio de Chirico, Milan, Nike, 1988, p. 129. The quotation is on page 104-105.
[12] Morton, Marsha – Max Klinger and Wilhelmine culture: on the
threshold of German modernism, Ashgate, 2014, pp. 414
[13] Morton, Marsha – “Malerei und Zeichnung”: The History and
Context of Max Klinger’s Guide to the Arts, in: Zeitschrift fü
Kunstgeschichte, Year 85, Vol. IV (1995), pp. 542-569. See also: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1482810?sid=21105552302593&uid=3737864&uid=2478518977&uid=2134&uid=3&uid=2&uid=60&uid=2478518987&uid=70
[14] See the essay: Pendleton Streicher, Elizabeth - Max Klinger's Malerei und Zeichnung: The Critical
Reception of the Prints and Their Text, in: Studies in the History of Art, Vol.
53, Symposium Papers XXXI: Imagining Modern German Culture: 1889–1910 (1996),
pp. 228-249. See: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/42622157?sid=21105582739343&uid=3737864&uid=70&uid=2134&uid=4&uid=2
[15] Pendleton Streicher, Elizabeth - Max Klinger's Malerei und Zeichnung … (quoted), p. 243
[16] The Swiss painter Stauffer-Bern was
a great friend of Klinger and a workshop mate of him in Rome. He also began
drafting a treaty on etching, which remained however unfinished. Stauffer-Bern, Karl - Tractat der Radierung, Berlin, 1886 (published by Ernst Arnold in Dresden
in 1907).
[17] Corinth, Lovis – Über deutsche Malerei. Ein Vortrag für die freie Studentenschaft in
Berlin (On German art. A speech to the free students in Berlin), Leipzig, Sirkel Verlag, 1914. The quotation
is at page 22. See also: http://www.zeno.org/Kunst/M/Corinth,+Lovis/Gesammelte+Schriften/%C3%9Cber+deutsche+Malerei
[19] Pastor, Willy – Max Klinger, with a drawing in the cover page by the author,
Berlin, Amsler & Ruthardt, 1918. See: https://archive.org/stream/maxklingermiteig00pastuoft#page/n7/mode/2up. The quotation is at page 124.
[20] Briefe
von Max Klinger aus den Jahren 1874 bis 1919 … (citato) p. 72.
[21] Morton,
Marsha – “Malerei und Zeichnung”(quoted),
p. 543.
[22] Kühn, Paul – Max Klinger, Lipsia, Breitkopf & Härtel, 1907. See https://archive.org/details/maxklinger00khgoog . The
quotation is at page 309.
[23] Haftmann, Werner; Hentzen, Alfred; Lieberman William S., German Art of the Twentieth Century, edited
by Andrew Carnduff Ritchie, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 1957, pp. 240.
The quotation is at page 188.
[26] Max Klinger. Wege zur Neubewertung. Schriften des Freundeskreises Max Klinger e.V.
Band 1 (Paths
towards a revaluation. Writings of the circle of the association of the friends
of Max Klinger. Tome 1),
edited by Pavla Langer, Zita Á. Pataki and Thomas Pöpper, Leipzig, Zöllner,
Plöttner Verlag, 2008
[28] Klinger, Max – Painting and drawing (quoted) 1988 (page 37)
[29] Pendleton Streicher, Elizabeth - Max Klinger's Malerei und Zeichnung … (quoted),
p. 237
[30] Klinger, Max – Gedanken und Bilder… (quoted) pages 28-29
[31] Briefe
von Max Klinger aus den Jahren 1874 bis 1919 … (quoted) pages 50-51.
[32] Klinger, Max – Gedanken und Bilder … (quoted), p. 38. It is a comment of 17 March 1885.
[33] Pendleton Streicher, Elizabeth - Max Klinger's Malerei und Zeichnung … (quoted), p. 241.
[34] Klinger, Max – Gedanken und Bilder … (quoted), p. 50. It is a comment of 21 July 1885. Klinger has just
visited the Louvre, and taken notes in his journal on Leonardo and Frans Hals. Commenting
the statement of Laforgue that the French are a people of painters, Klinger
observes with some disdain that only the modest Philipp de Champaigne is worth
to be seen at the Louvre, and that otherwise the French rooms in the Paris
museum are indeed 'horrible' (schauerlich).
Otherwise, the only reference to French painters in those pages is to Courbet
and Daubigny (the latter very badly exhibited, according to Klinger).
[37] Briefe
von Max Klinger aus den Jahren 1874 bis 1919 (quoted), p. 202
[38] Briefe
von Max Klinger aus den Jahren 1874 bis 1919 (quoted), p. 207
[39] Pendleton Streicher, Elizabeth - Max Klinger's Malerei und Zeichnung: (quoted),
p. 230
[40] Pendleton Streicher, Elizabeth - Max Klinger's Malerei und Zeichnung: (quoted)
p.230
Brilliant art and great insight of artist's work history. Wonderful blog
RispondiEliminaAmazing art work. Thanks for sharing.
RispondiElimina