From Monet to Grosz at The Schirn Kunsthalle

Thursday, 22 June 2006 12:20

Frankfurt, Germany - The urbanist system of reference which links the metropolis of French Impressionism with the metropolis of German Expressionism, serves as the pivot of the exhibition in the Schirn curated by Karin Sagner, Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani, and Matthias Ulrich.  The show pursues the urban traces from Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s (1809–1891) sustained interventions in Paris to the comprehensive redevelopment of Berlin under James Hobrecht (1825–1902) and highlights their impact on the fine arts.  The comparison between Paris and Berlin reveals how the fascination and curiosity characteristic of the way Impressionist painters like Claude Monet or Camille Pissarro recorded the urban citizens’ anonymity and, doing so, transferred the genre of landscape painting into the urban sphere, gave way to a horror of society in early 20th-century German Expressionism where the city – especially in works by George Grosz or Ludwig Meidner – presented itself as almost perverted and transformed into a living creature, a wild beast of prey.

Comprising nearly 300 paintings, photographs, city maps, graphic works, posters, and films, the four chapters of the exhibition – “Boulevard and Street,” “Urban Mise-en-Scènes,” “Mobility and Technology,” “Commercialism, Spectacle, Turmoil” – unfold a vast panorama of social, mainly bourgeois life in the two metropolises.

The exhibition “The Conquest of the Street. From Monet to Grosz” is sponsored by Friends of the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt e. V. and Fraport AG.

As the population of most European cities grew spectacularly until the end of the 19th century.  Technology and industry increasingly replaced agriculture and the craft guilds.  And while the outskirts saw the construction of factories and the creation of living space for workers, technological progress manifested itself in the form of multistoried houses, wide streets, illuminated shop windows, and roofed-over shopping arcades.  Prosperity and consumption spread and molded the modern citizen.  Originally planned as road axes, the boulevards attracted huge crowds.  Similarly, electric lighting, urban means of transport, and other modern achievements decisively informed the modern cityscape.

Paris, the “metropolis of the 19th century,” was the first modern city which gave birth to an urban myth all by itself and where – a model for other European metropolises – the new modern urban consciousness found its genuine form of representation.  The comprehensive and radical urban measures taken by Baron Haussmann in the years from 1852 to 1870 were crucial.  The concept of “Haussmannization” also comprised comparatively uniform façades and public green spaces.  Extensive demolition in the old quarters of the city, which banished the petit bourgeois population to the suburbs, was dictated by economic interests: coupled with notions of social reform.

The dynamics of the urban reorganization of Berlin in the second half of the 19th century was completely different from that of Paris since here – regarding the issue from a country/city perspective – the old center presented less of a hindrance to the modern metropolis.  Systematic development measures were already carried out in the bourgeois quarters of the rapidly growing suburbs (Friedrich-Wilhelm-Stadt, Friedrichvorstadt, Wilmersdorf and around Hohenzollerndamm) in the fifties and sixties and especially during the construction boom in the latter part of the century from 1871 on.  It was James Hobrecht who played a crucial role in the urban reorganization of Berlin: he worked out a development plan for its surroundings from 1859 to 1862.  Disastrous social circumstances soon prevailed.  Without having aimed at it, Hobrecht’s development plan thus contributed to transforming Berlin into the biggest tenement building city in the world.

While the urban measures and their consequences were seen negatively in Germany to an increasing extent, the attitude in France was primarily positive in spite of many reservations.  This different views are also reflected in the Impressionists’ and Expressionists’ works.  Urban life and urban space came to be seen as experiences of the modern as such, and the city as a subject became associated with modern painting, the aesthetical concept of modernity.  Thus, fascinated by the new Paris metropolis, Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro dedicated a number of paintings to cityscapes.  Offering a medium to realize their studies in light, atmosphere, and movement, vibrating street life remained the Impressionists’ favorite subject throughout many years.  The city views by Albert Birkle, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Ludwig Meidner, and George Grosz have to be seen against the background of the extreme social contrasts and the housing misery of Berlin, the fastest growing city of Europe around 1900, and the negative emotions resulting from them.

The Schirn Kunsthalle is Frankfurt's foremost exhibition space located in the heart of the old city next to the Dom (Frankfurt Cathedral).  Exhibitions in recent years included retrospectives of Wassily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, Frida Kahlo Alberto Giacometti, Bill Viola, and Yves Klein.  The name Schirn is dervied form the German word for an open-air stall for selling goods