The Expressionist movement included other types of culture, including dance, sculpture, cinema and theatre. , pioneer of
Expressionist dance (left) at her West Berlin studio in 1959|left
Dance Exponents of expressionist dance included
Mary Wigman,
Rudolf von Laban, and
Pina Bausch.
Sculpture Some
sculptors used the Expressionist style, as for example
Ernst Barlach. Other expressionist artists known mainly as painters, such as
Erich Heckel, also worked with sculpture.
Literature Journals Two leading Expressionist journals published in Berlin were
Der Sturm, published by
Herwarth Walden starting in 1910, and
Die Aktion, which first appeared in 1911 and was edited by
Franz Pfemfert.
Der Sturm published poetry and prose from contributors such as
Peter Altenberg,
Max Brod,
Richard Dehmel,
Alfred Döblin,
Anatole France,
Knut Hamsun, Arno Holz,
Karl Kraus,
Selma Lagerlöf,
Adolf Loos,
Heinrich Mann,
Paul Scheerbart, and
René Schickele, and writings, drawings, and prints by such artists as
Kokoschka, Kandinsky, and members of
Der blaue Reiter.
Drama Oskar Kokoschka's 1909 playlet,
Murderer, The Hope of Women is often termed the first expressionist drama. In it, an unnamed man and woman struggle for dominance. The man brands the woman; she stabs and imprisons him. He frees himself and she falls dead at his touch. As the play ends, he slaughters all around him (in the words of the text) "like mosquitoes." The extreme simplification of characters to mythic types, choral effects, declamatory dialogue and heightened intensity all would become characteristic of later expressionist plays. The German composer
Paul Hindemith created an
operatic version of this play, which premiered in 1921. Expressionism was a dominant influence on early 20th-century German theatre, of which
Georg Kaiser and
Ernst Toller were the most famous playwrights. Other notable Expressionist dramatists included
Reinhard Sorge,
Walter Hasenclever,
Hans Henny Jahnn, and
Arnolt Bronnen. Important precursors were the Swedish playwright August Strindberg and German actor and dramatist Frank Wedekind. During the 1920s, Expressionism enjoyed a brief period of influence in American theatre, including the early modernist plays by
Eugene O'Neill (
The Hairy Ape,
The Emperor Jones and
The Great God Brown),
Sophie Treadwell (
Machinal) and
Elmer Rice (
The Adding Machine). Expressionist plays often dramatise the spiritual awakening and sufferings of their protagonists. Some utilise an
episodic dramatic structure and are known as
Stationendramen (station plays), modeled on the presentation of the suffering and death of
Jesus in the
Stations of the Cross. Strindberg had pioneered this form with his autobiographical trilogy
To Damascus. These plays also often dramatise the struggle against bourgeois values and established authority, frequently personified by the Father. In Sorge's
The Beggar, (
Der Bettler), for example, the young hero's mentally ill father raves about the prospect of mining the riches of Mars and is finally poisoned by his son. In Bronnen's
Parricide (
Vatermord), the son stabs his tyrannical father to death, only to have to fend off the frenzied sexual overtures of his mother. In Expressionist drama, the speech may be either expansive and rhapsodic, or clipped and telegraphic. Director
Leopold Jessner became famous for his expressionistic productions, often set on stark, steeply raked flights of stairs (having borrowed the idea from the
Symbolist director and designer,
Edward Gordon Craig). Staging was especially important in Expressionist drama, with directors forgoing the illusion of reality to block actors in as close to two-dimensional movement. Directors also made heavy use of lighting effects to create stark contrast and as another method to heavily emphasize emotion and convey the play or a scene's message. German expressionist playwrights: •
Georg Kaiser (1878) •
Ernst Toller (1893–1939) •
Hans Henny Jahnn (1894–1959) •
Reinhard Sorge (1892–1916) •
Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) Playwrights influenced by Expressionism: •
Seán O'Casey (1880–1964) •
Eugene O'Neill (1885–1953) •
Elmer Rice (1892–1967) •
Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) •
Arthur Miller (1915–2005) •
Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
Poetry Among the poets associated with German Expressionism were: •
Jakob van Hoddis •
Georg Trakl •
Walter Rheiner •
Gottfried Benn •
Georg Heym •
Else Lasker-Schüler •
Ernst Stadler •
August Stramm •
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926):
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910) •
Geo Milev Other poets influenced by expressionism: •
T. S. Eliot •
Rudolf Broby-Johansen •
Tom Kristensen •
Pär Lagerkvist •
Edith Södergran Prose In prose, the early stories and novels of Alfred Döblin were influenced by Expressionism, and
Franz Kafka is sometimes labelled an Expressionist. Some further writers and works that have been called Expressionist include: •
Franz Kafka (1883–1924): "
The Metamorphosis" (1915),
The Trial (1925),
The Castle (1926) •
Alfred Döblin (1878–1957):
Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) •
Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957) •
Djuna Barnes (1892–1982):
Nightwood (1936) •
Malcolm Lowry (1909–1957):
Under the Volcano (1947) •
Ernest Hemingway •
James Joyce (1882–1941): "The Nighttown" section of
Ulysses (1922) •
Patrick White (1912–1990) •
D. H. Lawrence •
Sheila Watson:
Double Hook •
Elias Canetti:
Auto-da-Fé •
Thomas Pynchon •
William Faulkner •
James Hanley (1897–1985) •
Raul Brandão (1867–1930):
Húmus (1917) •
Leonid Andreyev (1871–1919): ''Devil's Diary'' (1919)
Music The term expressionism "was probably first applied to music in 1918, especially to Schoenberg", because like the painter Kandinsky he avoided "traditional forms of beauty" to convey powerful feelings in his music.
Arnold Schoenberg,
Anton Webern and
Alban Berg, the members of the
Second Viennese School, are important
Expressionists (Schoenberg was also an expressionist painter). Other composers that have been associated with expressionism are
Krenek (the Second Symphony),
Paul Hindemith (
The Young Maiden),
Igor Stravinsky (
Japanese Songs),
Alexander Scriabin (late piano sonatas) (Adorno 2009, 275). Another significant expressionist was
Béla Bartók in early works, written in the second decade of the 20th century, such as ''
Bluebeard's Castle (1911), The Wooden Prince (1917), and The Miraculous Mandarin'' (1919). Important precursors of expressionism are
Richard Wagner (1813–1883),
Gustav Mahler (1860–1911), and
Richard Strauss (1864–1949).
Theodor Adorno describes expressionism as concerned with the unconscious, and states that "the depiction of fear lies at the centre" of expressionist music, with dissonance predominating, so that the "harmonious, affirmative element of art is banished" (Adorno 2009, 275–76).
Erwartung and
Die Glückliche Hand, by Schoenberg, and
Wozzeck, an opera by Alban Berg (based on the play
Woyzeck by
Georg Büchner), are examples of Expressionist works. If one were to draw an analogy from paintings, one may describe the expressionist painting technique as the distortion of reality (mostly colors and shapes) to create a nightmarish effect for the particular painting as a whole. Expressionist music roughly does the same thing, where the dramatically increased dissonance creates, aurally, a nightmarish atmosphere.
Architecture in Potsdam In architecture, two specific buildings are identified as Expressionist:
Bruno Taut's
Glass Pavilion of the
Cologne Werkbund Exhibition (1914), and
Erich Mendelsohn's
Einstein Tower in
Potsdam, Germany completed in 1921. The interior of
Hans Poelzig's Berlin theatre (the
Grosse Schauspielhaus), designed for the director
Max Reinhardt, is also cited sometimes. The influential architectural critic and historian
Sigfried Giedion, in his book
Space, Time and Architecture (1941), dismissed Expressionist architecture as a part of the development of
functionalism. In Mexico, in 1953, German émigré
Mathias Goeritz published the
Arquitectura Emocional ("Emotional Architecture") manifesto with which he declared that "architecture's principal function is emotion". Modern Mexican architect
Luis Barragán adopted the term that influenced his work. The two of them collaborated in the project
Torres de Satélite (1957–58) guided by Goeritz's principles of
Arquitectura Emocional. It was only during the 1970s that Expressionism in architecture came to be re-evaluated more positively. ==See also==