If You Want To Check Out My Art Go To - www.thepanicartist.com Since
my mid teen's my favorite artistic movement has been Expressionism. No
other group of artist has so deeply influenced my art - and their
influence is clear in all my work. For me it is more than an art
movement - it is a spiritual movement. Expressionist artists did not
chose art - they had forced on them like a fever. Unlike other modern
movements like Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism or Futurism -
Expressionism was never a unified group - it was a dispersed group of
loners living in isolation on the edge of society. No other movement
not even Surrealism is so closely linked to madness. While the
Surrealists played and flirted with insanity - the Expressionists were
stark raving mad!
Expressionism is typically a Northern European movement - it has none
of the joy of life of Mediterranean art. The public in Paris, London
and New York have always been suspicious of Expressionism. Exhibitions
of Expressionist greats like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner or Max Beckman or
Anselm Kiefer have never achieved the viewing figures or public
fondness of artists like Monet, Matisse, Warhol, Hockney or Koons and
Hirst. The public are suspicious of the ugliness and tendency towards
caricature in Expressionism.
It may take more time for the Conservative viewer - obsessed with
beauty in art - to appreciate the great qualities of Expressionist
art. But close study is rewarded with art of real integrity and
purpose. Expressionism is the total opposite of 'art-for-arts-sake'.
For the Expressionist - art is a compulsion, an obsession and
literally a reason for living. That is why Expressionism is one of the
few art movements filled with countless self-taught artists who
rebelled from art colleges. There is no separating the lives of
Expressionist artists from the art they made - one was provoked by the
other. The life stories of most Expressionist artists were tragic in
the extreme - childhood bereavement, years of rejection, acholism,
syphilis, poverty, isolation, public ridicule, madness, depression,
mental hospitals, attempted suicides and successful suicides.
The roots of Expressionism dates back to the late German Gothic and
the woodcuts of Durer. It is also there in Bosch and Brueghel. It can
also be seen in the tempestuous paintings of Jacopo Robusti
Tintoretto, El Greco, and Jose de Ribera.
I date the real start of modern Expressionism to Goya's Black
Paintings 1821-3 (housed now in the Prado museum in Madrid) and it
continues to this day in the work of Julian Schnabel, Anslem Kiefer,
John Bellany - and in Ireland with Paddy Graham, Brian Maguire and
myself.
The masters of modern Expressionism were in my view; Francisco Goya y
Lucientes, Theodore Gericault, Honore Daumier, Tolouse Lautrec, Van
Gogh, August Strindberg, Edvard Munch, James Esnor, Lovis Corinth,
Kees van Dongen, Richard Gerstl, Oskar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele, Ernst
Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff,
Alexei von Jawlensky, Paula Mondersohn-Becker, Constant Permeke,
Georges Rouault, Amadeo Modigliani, Jules Pascin, Chaim Soutine, Max
Beckman, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Antonin Artaud, Wols, Alberto
Giacometti, Jackson Pollock, Ar****le Gorky, William De Kooning, Mark
Rothko, Asger Jorn, Jean Atlan, Francis Gruber, Jean Fautrier, Francis
Bacon, George Baslitz, Leon Golub, John Bellany, Anselm Kiefer, Frank
Aurebach, Leon Kossoff, Julian Schnabel, Jean-Michel Basquiat and
Hughie O'Donoughe.
These are my gods. In their work I find a depth of feeling and
perception utterly lacking in other modern art. Their styles vary
enormously but what they all have in common is genuine soul.
Expressionist artists had no interest in a photographic representation
of the world - they loathed cold academic realist art. They distorted
and accentuated reality in order to express their feelings for the
world. Expressionist painting is the exact opposite of photo-realist
painting. They used violent, garish, jarring colours - often taken
straight from the tube - they piled the paint on with thick hog hair
brushes amassing think trenches of impastoed paint. They used sever
explosive lines - drawn with haste and a heavy hand. They used sharp
contrasts of light and shade and contrasting colours. The subjects of
their paintings were dramatic and animated - street scenes, brothel
scenes, vulgar ****s, aggressive self-****traits, and an overall
infatuation with nature.
Most Expressionist artists were angry young men revolting against
bourgeoisie society. They often produced their freshest and most
powerful work in their early twenties and then lived long lives in
which they cannibalized their past art for inspiration.
Typically they were ***ist pigs - and their ****trayal of women in
their art was often cruel and misogynistic. But compare their
depictions of themselves and the women in their lives and you will be
hard pressed to say they did not hate themselves as much as women.
However there is no doubt that no other artistic movement has
****trayed women so savagely. Women in Expressionist paintings were
typically fierce dominatrix, femme fatal's or prostitutes - just look
at Munch or Kirchner or De Kooning. But at other times there was great
tenderness in their view of women, just look at Toulouse Lautrecs's
drawings of prostitutes, or Schiele's paintings of his wife Edith, or
Max Beckman's paintings of his wife Quip - and tell me these men did
not have a heart.
They were often greatly spiritual men - even though they professed
atheism - just look at Van Gogh, Rouault, Pollock and Bacon. Moreover
their work was fully of a morbid vigor verging on the epileptic. Their
work was often driven by panic, fear, alienation, ***ual shame, angst
and despair. Their philosophy was embodied by Nietzsche's 'overman'
and his view of culture as a battle between the Apollonian (Classical
order) and Dionysian spirits (Baroque emotion). Later the philosophy
of Soren Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre described the true fate of
the Expressionist artist living in a world after Gods death.
Expressionist artist were and are typically egotistical, technically
incompetent and emotionally unstable. But the raw honesty of their art
****nes brightly in a world of fake polite paintings for fake polite
people. They have a message - they want humanity to hear - and pursue
their vision with messianic devotion. Their tragedy is that their
message has often not been understood for decades if at all.
If You Want To Check Out My Art Go To - www.thepanicartist.com
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