by Jean Marie Carey | 12 Jan 2018 | Art History, August Macke, Franz Marc, Re-Enactments© and MashUps
My research about the 1914 Franz Marc essay »Das abstrakte Theater« and Marc’s collaboration with Hugo Ball on an intended production of The Tempest has been published in a special arts issue of Empty Mirror. The fun long title of the article is “The Tempest and the Savages: Franz Marc, Hugo Ball, and a Decisive Moment in Dada-Expressionist Theater With a Special Appearance by August Macke,” and this piece contains important breaking historical avant-garde news.
Fig.01: Franz Marc, Fragmentary First Page of „Das abstrakte Theater,“ 1914. Das Archiv für Bildende Kunst im Germanischen Nationalmuseum, Nürnberg, Germany.
Here is the abstract: This article discusses the 1914 Franz Marc essay “Das abstrakte Theater” and the events surrounding an “Expressionist” production of Shakespeare’s Der Sturm planned by Marc and Hugo Ball the same year. Marc’s position in this detour from painting and writing can be understood in terms of his embrace of “die ‘Wilden’” – “the ‘Savages’” – an idea Marc introduces in 1912’s Blaue Reiter Almanac – as a metaphorical aspiration and as a state of being for both artists and the public as patrons of the arts and citizens of modernity. I also bring recognition to August Macke’s background in theatrical theory and design in terms of how this influenced Marc, particularly in analysis of the artists’ collaboration on Macke’s contribution to the Blaue Reiter Almanac, the essay “Die Masken,” and how this relates to the Der Sturm project. I propose a way of understanding how Marc’s beliefs in the paradoxically beneficial power of destruction dovetailed with Ball’s theology. In the context of this background information I give close reading of paintings Marc made of the Caliban and Miranda characters from Der Sturm. I also correct inaccuracies in the record regarding the chronologies of this encounter between these protagonists of Dada and Expressionism, and in our understanding of Marc’s text itself. Viewing this data in a holistic manner allows new interpretations of influences and collaborations amid the historical avant-garde.
It is great working with Denise Enck at Empty Mirror so it would be nice to look at the article on the Empty Mirror website, but if you would like a PDF of the article there is one here and also at Humanities Commons.
Fig.04: Franz Marc, Miranda, 1914. ( Tempera, 46 x 39.5 cm.) Kunstmuseum Basel, Kupferstichkabinett der öffentlichen Kunstsammlung, Switzerland.
Fig.03: Franz Marc, Caliban, 1914. (Figure for Shakespeare’s „Der Sturm“. Tempera, 46 x 39.5 cm.) Kunstmuseum Basel, Kupferstichkabinett der öffentlichen Kunstsammlung, Switzerland.
by Jean Marie Carey | 3 Mar 2015 | Animals in Art, Art History, August Macke, Franz Marc
Today is the 99th anniversary of the death of Franz Marc. (Marc would have really liked someone who also died this week, Leonard Nimoy and Nimoy’s Mr. Spock character from Star Trek.) I didn’t write my normal “Franz Marc’s Birthday” post (Marc’s birthday is 8 February) this year because the idea of the grief we feel for Marc and August Macke has been much on my mind. This is partly owing to my own research, but also to do with the publication of the catalogue attendant to the Lenbachhaus’s current exhibition, August Macke und Franz Marc: eine Künstlerfreundschaft (August Macke and Franz Marc: An Artist Friendship in English).
The catalogue is, not surprisingly, a tour-de-force of editing and research by longtime Lenbachhaus Blaue Reiter curator Annegret Hoberg and Volker Adolphs of Kunstmuseum Bonn. What is unexpected is that the editors and included authors bring to bear not just a wealth of knowledge but so much compassion to these essays, confronting directly the loss and sadness we naturally feel over the too-short lives of Marc and Macke.
This is not to say the entries are not impeccably scholarly; Hoberg’s “August Macke and Franz Marc / Ideas for a Renewal of Painting” and Adolphs’ “Seeing the World and Seeing Through the World / Nature in the Work of August Macke and Franz Marc” are classic art historiography based in peerless analysis. Gregor Wedekind’s “The Masks of the Savages / Primitivism and Cultural Critique in the Work of August Macke and Franz Marc” was of particular interest to me as it underscores how the work of the avant-gardes was received in its time as a shocking departure from what the world then considered “civilized” painting. There are a few small errors marring Klara Drenker-Nagels’ otherwise illuminating discussion of the relationship between Maria Marc and Elisabeth Erdmann-Macke that I’m sure will be corrected in subsequent editions.
Of special delight in terms of the arrangement and presentation of the catalogue are some shorter, data-packed chapters on the Paradies (1912) mural and other anecdotes about Marc’s and Macke’s overlapping but very different lives.
Of course the catalogue is rich with the paintings, weavings, sketches, and photos that grace the exhibition itself. As a discrete publication, this is one that must truly be enjoyed as a book – I received it on a Friday afternoon and spent the entire weekend poring over every image, footnote, and phrase, alternately smiling and wiping away tears. Turning the last page, I was filled with admiration for this Lenbachhaus-Kunstmuseum Bonn collaboration, every word written with love.
