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polity german empireconcept:era modern

Street, Berlin

Oil on canvas (1913) by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Depicts a Berlin street scene with fashionably dressed women and male figures — the visual cacophony and alienation of the modern metropolis rendered in Kirchner's angular, heightened color palette. The defining image of Die Brücke's Berlin period.

Scholarly Significance

Kirchner's Street, Berlin (1913) is the definitive image of the Berlin street scene as alienated, modern spectacle — the Expressionist city as psychological state.

Notes

  • ·Die Brücke moved from Dresden to Berlin in 1911; Kirchner's Berlin street scenes document his encounter with the modern metropolis.
  • ·The painting depicts the Kurfürstendamm (or a similar fashionable boulevard); the women in elaborate dresses and hats are figures of the new urban consumer culture.
  • ·The male figures' faces are mask-like and predatory; the women occupy the foreground but appear oblivious — a charged sexual-commercial atmosphere.
  • ·Kirchner was deeply influenced by El Greco's elongated figures and by African and Oceanic art (encountered in the Dresden Völkerkunde Museum).
  • ·Die Brücke dissolved in 1913, partly over a dispute about Kirchner's chronicle of the group, which the others felt gave him disproportionate credit.
  • ·The work was included in the MoMA collection; Kirchner also produced variants and related works under similar titles.