My first real introduction to art history was a high school class I signed up for because I thought it would be interesting. I’d read some pocket biographies of famous artists and I wanted to get a broader view of how they fit together. I didn’t think it would be easy but when a subject is interesting that makes even the hard parts worth it. It helped that I had a really good teacher.
We started with the 19th century which both made sense and was also jumping into the deep end. It was where all those movements and -isms really started—Classicism and Romanticism leading into Impressionism and so on. But then it wasn’t until around the 12th century that putting paintings in frames and carrying them around became widespread and the first public art museum didn’t open until 1661. There’s been art as long as there have been people—art history is human history—but the 19th century is one point where European art at least started to get organized in a way that’s easy to study.
One of the later groups we learned about was called Die Brücke, The Bridge. They were unusual because, first of all, their name wasn’t an -ism (they were kind of a subgroup of Expressionism but that gets complicated) and they were also in Germany. Most of the artists and movements we were learning about were in Paris. Many artists even came to Paris from other parts of Europe and beyond to be part of what some considered the center of the art world. A little side trip to Dresden was a reminder that art, and art history, was happening everywhere. It was also happening in Africa and Asia and North America and South America and Australia and Oceania, anywhere there were people, but we didn’t get into that at the time.
I was really fascinated by Die Brücke paintings which are bold and colorful. I especially liked Emil Nolde who did a whole series of paintings of masks. But why “The Bridge”? I asked my teacher. She thought for a minute and said, “I don’t know. I never thought about it. Why don’t you look it up and you can tell me because I’d like to know too.”
I told you she was a good teacher.
The answer, by the way, is that, like a lot of founders of art movements, they were young and idealistic and wanted to create art that was “a bridge to the future”, breaking with past traditions and opening up a whole new freedom of expression. When I read that it opened up my mind to the realization that all art, really, is a bridge to the future—art is creating something that didn’t exist but which reaches beyond the present.
I still think about that every time I see art on or near a bridge.
Here’s Emil Nolde’s Mask Still Life III.
Source: Artchive
I’d love to take an art history course and learn more about all those different movements and styles. On our recent cruise, we went to all the art auctions because the auctioneer would give a very informative spiel about each of the artists ????
mydangblog recently posted…Profiled
That would be really fascinating. Even though I’ve taken several art history courses and continue to read about art history there are so many artists I only know a little about, or have never heard of. There’s not even a really specific “art history”, just stories of art and the artists who create it, which is why it’s such an enormous field.
Your posts are always a bridge to interesting places, Chris, which I am very happy to cross.
Ann Koplow recently posted…Day 4299: The last six months
Thank you, Ann, for offering comments which are themselves a bridge to the future.