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拍品專文
The famous critic of Expressionism Carl Einstein wrote of African sculpture that, 'in formal realism, which should not be understood as imitative Naturalism, transcendence is a given... The work of art is not viewed as an arbitrary and artificial creation, but rather as a mythic reality, which is more potent than nature... Religious African art is categorical and possesses a... being which excludes all limitations' (C. Einstein, Negerplastik, Leipzig, 1915, p. xv, cited in J. Lloyd, German Expressionism, Primitivism and Modernity, New Haven, p. 72).
It was precisely this aspect of much so-called 'primitive' art and of wood carved sculpture in particular that Ernst Ludwig Kirchner prized. As it was for the Africans, for Kirchner too, the block of wood contained an innate spirit which could be revealed by the hands of the artist. 'It is so good for painting and drawing to carve figures', Kirchner once wrote to his friend and patron Gustav Schiefler, 'It gives drawing more determination and it is a sensual pleasure, when blow for blow the figure grows out of the tree trunk. In every trunk a figure is to be found, you only need to pare away the wood' (Kirchner, 'Letter to Gustav Schiefler 27 June 1911', cited in S. Barron, exh. cat. German Expressionist sculpture, County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1984, p. 114).
Stehendes Mädchen, Karyatide (Standing Girl, Caryatide) is a rare and important wood-carved figure that Kirchner made in 1910. Once part of Gustav Schiefler's famous collection, it is one of the very first wooden sculptures of a female figure that Kirchner made and was acquired by Schiefler a few years after his first visit to the artist's Dresden studio in December 1910. Schiefler, who was closely involved with the creation of Kirchner's sculptures, even on occasion sourcing and sending the artist suitable supplies of maple wood for him to carve, recorded his impressions of this visit to Kirchner's studio, writing; 'Out of necessity he had rented a remarkable studio in a Dresden suburb, a narrow shop which had a large glass window to the street and a small adjacent space that served as a bedroom. These rooms were fantastically decorated with coloured textiles which he had made using the batik technique; with all sorts of exotic equipment and wood carvings by his own hand. A primitive setting, born of necessity but nevertheless strongly marked by his own taste. He lived a disorderly lifestyle here according to bourgeois standards, simple in material terms, but highly ambitious in his artistic sensitivity. He worked feverishly, without noticing the time of day... everyone that comes into contact with him, must respond with strong interest to this total commitment to his work and derive from it a concept of the true artist' (Gustav Schiefler, cited in Postkarten an Gustav Schiefler, ed. G. Schack, Hamburg, 1976, p. 80).
As with the woodcut prints that had first drawn Schiefler to their art, it was the rawness and primacy of the woodcarving technique that appealed to the Brücke artists. Prizing intuition, directness and spontaneity above all other aspects, wood carving offered itself as the perfect medium for Die Brücke sculpture and as such was taken up by the majority of the group. As Kirchner himself later commented, 'how different that sculpture appears when the artist has formed it with his own hands out of the genuine material, each curvature and cavity formed by the sensitivity of the creator's hand, each sharp blow or tender carving expressing the immediate feelings of the artist'(Kirchner writing under the pseudonym L. de Marsalle, 'Concerning the Sculpture of E.L. Kirchner', Der Cicerone, vol. 17, no. 14, 1925, pp. 695-701).
Stehendes Mädchen, Karyatide is one of a group of carved wooden sculptures of female nudes that Kirchner made in 1910 which he used to adorn his faux-primitive studio in addition to the Cameroon leopard stool, African textiles and a Tanzanian mask that postcard sketches, paintings and other documentary evidence from the time reveals. Stehendes Mädchen, Karyatide itself appears in numerous paintings and sketches by Kirchner and Heckel from this period including Heckel's 1911 Stilleben mit Holzfigur (Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam), Kirchner's 1910 Doris Und Heckel am Tisch and a 1912 painting dedicated to his sculptures entitled Vier Holzplastiken. This last work displays four of Kirchner's carved wooden sculptures including Stehendes Mädchen, Karyatide, the Stuttgart Staatgalerie's Kleiner Adam and two other female figures that are now lost. Each work, in addition to reflecting the influence of African art, draws heavily on Kirchner's fascination with the non-European art that in 1910 he had recently begun to seek out in Dresden's Ethnographic Museum. The raw forms of this caryatide's angular carving and the linearity of its pose reflect, in particular, the wood-carved beams from the Palau islands in the South Pacific and the lyrical twisting forms of the Indian nudes from the cave paintings of Ajanta that in the winter of 1910 Kirchner had discovered in John Griffith's 1896 book on the subject. While possibly deriving from these sources, the subtle twisting pose of this figure may in fact stem more directly from a 1910 painting that Kirchner made of his young model Franzi Fehrmann standing in his studio - the painting Nacktes Mädchen hinter Vorhang now in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
Franzi was the perfect muse and inspiration for the artists of Die Brücke. At the time only twelve years old, she was the human embodiment of the primal nature that these artists sought to celebrate in their work. Neither a child nor an adult she remained an untamed force of nature as yet uncorrupted and unmolded by the restricting and repressive forces of Western civilisation and Willhelminian Germany in particular. A human in the rough, Franzi seemed to carry within her the same innocent and invigorating spirit that Kirchner sought to both invoke and give form to through his art. The roughly hewn and simplified form of the nude young woman that is Stehendes Mädchen, Karyatide is as clear and direct an assertion of this as anything that Kirchner ever produced.
It was precisely this aspect of much so-called 'primitive' art and of wood carved sculpture in particular that Ernst Ludwig Kirchner prized. As it was for the Africans, for Kirchner too, the block of wood contained an innate spirit which could be revealed by the hands of the artist. 'It is so good for painting and drawing to carve figures', Kirchner once wrote to his friend and patron Gustav Schiefler, 'It gives drawing more determination and it is a sensual pleasure, when blow for blow the figure grows out of the tree trunk. In every trunk a figure is to be found, you only need to pare away the wood' (Kirchner, 'Letter to Gustav Schiefler 27 June 1911', cited in S. Barron, exh. cat. German Expressionist sculpture, County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 1984, p. 114).
Stehendes Mädchen, Karyatide (Standing Girl, Caryatide) is a rare and important wood-carved figure that Kirchner made in 1910. Once part of Gustav Schiefler's famous collection, it is one of the very first wooden sculptures of a female figure that Kirchner made and was acquired by Schiefler a few years after his first visit to the artist's Dresden studio in December 1910. Schiefler, who was closely involved with the creation of Kirchner's sculptures, even on occasion sourcing and sending the artist suitable supplies of maple wood for him to carve, recorded his impressions of this visit to Kirchner's studio, writing; 'Out of necessity he had rented a remarkable studio in a Dresden suburb, a narrow shop which had a large glass window to the street and a small adjacent space that served as a bedroom. These rooms were fantastically decorated with coloured textiles which he had made using the batik technique; with all sorts of exotic equipment and wood carvings by his own hand. A primitive setting, born of necessity but nevertheless strongly marked by his own taste. He lived a disorderly lifestyle here according to bourgeois standards, simple in material terms, but highly ambitious in his artistic sensitivity. He worked feverishly, without noticing the time of day... everyone that comes into contact with him, must respond with strong interest to this total commitment to his work and derive from it a concept of the true artist' (Gustav Schiefler, cited in Postkarten an Gustav Schiefler, ed. G. Schack, Hamburg, 1976, p. 80).
As with the woodcut prints that had first drawn Schiefler to their art, it was the rawness and primacy of the woodcarving technique that appealed to the Brücke artists. Prizing intuition, directness and spontaneity above all other aspects, wood carving offered itself as the perfect medium for Die Brücke sculpture and as such was taken up by the majority of the group. As Kirchner himself later commented, 'how different that sculpture appears when the artist has formed it with his own hands out of the genuine material, each curvature and cavity formed by the sensitivity of the creator's hand, each sharp blow or tender carving expressing the immediate feelings of the artist'(Kirchner writing under the pseudonym L. de Marsalle, 'Concerning the Sculpture of E.L. Kirchner', Der Cicerone, vol. 17, no. 14, 1925, pp. 695-701).
Stehendes Mädchen, Karyatide is one of a group of carved wooden sculptures of female nudes that Kirchner made in 1910 which he used to adorn his faux-primitive studio in addition to the Cameroon leopard stool, African textiles and a Tanzanian mask that postcard sketches, paintings and other documentary evidence from the time reveals. Stehendes Mädchen, Karyatide itself appears in numerous paintings and sketches by Kirchner and Heckel from this period including Heckel's 1911 Stilleben mit Holzfigur (Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam), Kirchner's 1910 Doris Und Heckel am Tisch and a 1912 painting dedicated to his sculptures entitled Vier Holzplastiken. This last work displays four of Kirchner's carved wooden sculptures including Stehendes Mädchen, Karyatide, the Stuttgart Staatgalerie's Kleiner Adam and two other female figures that are now lost. Each work, in addition to reflecting the influence of African art, draws heavily on Kirchner's fascination with the non-European art that in 1910 he had recently begun to seek out in Dresden's Ethnographic Museum. The raw forms of this caryatide's angular carving and the linearity of its pose reflect, in particular, the wood-carved beams from the Palau islands in the South Pacific and the lyrical twisting forms of the Indian nudes from the cave paintings of Ajanta that in the winter of 1910 Kirchner had discovered in John Griffith's 1896 book on the subject. While possibly deriving from these sources, the subtle twisting pose of this figure may in fact stem more directly from a 1910 painting that Kirchner made of his young model Franzi Fehrmann standing in his studio - the painting Nacktes Mädchen hinter Vorhang now in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
Franzi was the perfect muse and inspiration for the artists of Die Brücke. At the time only twelve years old, she was the human embodiment of the primal nature that these artists sought to celebrate in their work. Neither a child nor an adult she remained an untamed force of nature as yet uncorrupted and unmolded by the restricting and repressive forces of Western civilisation and Willhelminian Germany in particular. A human in the rough, Franzi seemed to carry within her the same innocent and invigorating spirit that Kirchner sought to both invoke and give form to through his art. The roughly hewn and simplified form of the nude young woman that is Stehendes Mädchen, Karyatide is as clear and direct an assertion of this as anything that Kirchner ever produced.