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Creation of the Second Person
Literality in Käthe Kollwitz's Works
Heui-yeong Yi, Art Critic
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Käthe Kollwitz, 1867～1945 | I remember a few of my colleagues whose eyes sparkled when they merely heard the name of Käthe Kollwitz(1867-1945) uttered, as if seeing her in person. One of them, chronicled as a minjung(grass-roots) artist in a book published several years ago, has a career as a political prisoner against the security law. Another friend, who has engaged in literature, is well versed in the arts of Käthe Kollwitz described in a book printed in 1986. They mostly noticed Käthe Kollwitz's message of protest and resistance conveyed by her graphics of figures and scenes. Their concern seems to have no particular difference with that of other spectators in the 1980s.
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Käthe Kollwitz and
Lu Hsün,
Seou;l Yeolhwadang,
1986 |
Facing works of Käthe Kollwitz, I feel now a sense of emptiness. Above all else, why did I try to simply hear despite apparently visual elements of her works? Probably late, but I try to see them now.
Response to Avant-garde
The entire life of Käthe Kollwitz coincides largely with the heyday of Avant-garde when it took the lead in the art world with its extreme experimentation. Kollwitz, however, never gave a glance to the avant-garde and even rejected it resolutely. Nevertheless, she was widely admired and respected in the two Germanies under the Cold War structure. Her art was also hailed in China and accepted in the 1980s Korea as an indication that art was able to remain sufficiently communicable.
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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, The Red Towr in
Halle, 1915, Oil on canvas, 120x91 |
A few avant-garde artists and formalistic evolutionists poignantly denounced Kollwitz's art, even though it was easily understood and thus the general public could have access to her works. It's because they saw her art as too much narrative. They considered the arts of Ludwig Kirchner(1880-1983) and Emil Nolde(1867-1956) closer to a new tradition, treating them as a pioneering artist towards the pure essence of media. Kollwitz's formal features and humanistic subjects provoke sympathy not only in Germany, her native country but also every place where her art has been introduced. Especially, the integration of thematic depth and creative techniques in her prints and drawings, despite their criticism, ensures a stable position in the history of contemporary art.
From Etching to Lithograph
Though Kollwitz started her career as a painter, her art is actually represented by drawing, sculpture and print.
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Käthe Kollwitz, "진격(Outbreak): 농민전쟁연작", 1901~02, Etching, 507x592
| Etching was the first graphic medium she attempted. Subsequently, she produced several outstanding works including serial print "Peasant War"(1903-1908), "The Young Couple"(1904) and "Woman with Dead Child"(1903). These prints display her prime concern with the texture of a surface, contrast, ink and paper. Most of her early pieces including works of the 1910s address the themes of literary works and historical events such as 16th peasant wars and 19th Silesian weaver's revolts.
By 1919 Kollwitz gave up etchings possible for extreme details of figures and scenes and adopted wood print and lithography for more pared-down expressions.
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Käthe Kollwitz, 과부(The Widow), portfolio
cover for War, 1922, woodcut on heavy
brown paper, sheet 672X485 | By doing this, Kollwitz's work became far more coincident with its conceptual purpose. By drawing directly on the stone she was able to create an image with the idiosyncratic quality of her drawing style, "a quality recording hand gestures". The simplified purity of lithography suited her involvement in social issues. World War I, in which she lost her son,was a watershed for her art and since 1918 she produced considerably large number of independent drawings featuring social issues such as abortion, alcoholism, war and urban life conditions.
Vital Lines and Solid Forms
In her early etchings including "The Revolt of Weavers"(1893-1896) and "Peasant War" Kollwitz described her themes in powerfully vivid, long lines wholly implying her hand gestures. These lines seem vivid and not entangled.
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Käthe Kollwitz, 폭동 (Storming in Gate), 1897,
proof for sheet 5 of A Weavers' Rebellion, etching,
247X305, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift
of Frederick C.Oechsner
| With no fields of color completed, her line rendering lends the canvas a specific atmosphere through the contrast of light and shade and the contours of figures. Kollwitz states that "A simple, unrestricted way of rendering enlivens the lives of objects." This comment is often found inher drawings portraying host of performers under the limited lighting of a well-schemed stage. Her drawings demonstrate shapes reflected by lighting and allude to visual perception that is temporal, intermittent and captures glittering moments by the retina. Rather than depending on imagination or association to reproduce the imagery, Kollwitz seems to employ unique lines in the process of documenting vitality she often underwent.
This indicates that Kollwitz, from a starting point of her career, moves beyond the tradition of German Realism.
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Albrecht Dürer, Das Wappen mit dem
Totenschädel, 1503 | It's thought in German Realism, inherited from Albrecht Dürer(1471-1528), how to conceal its methods and media was of critically significant in engendering hallucinations. A work of art exposing these elements was regarded as incomplete. Although the theme of her work dominated by passions and gloom is typical of German Realism, she unveils her method and material, differently from her processors. Deviating from the tradition of generating hallucinations, Kollwitz's innovation is derived from her will to record what she viewed as they appeared.
In contrast to the Expressionists who gave up illusion and representation to account for the subject and who attained their artistic objectives by the use of outrageous gestures and erupting materials, her practice still depends on traditional figures and looks like narrative illustrations.
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Käthe Kollwitz, "독일 아이들이 굶고 있다"(Deutschlands kinder hungern!;
Germany's children are starving! Kl. 190 A.III.a.1), 1924, Original lithograph, 405x275
| In works rendered after the First World War she replaced delicate lines with the fields of monochrome colors and reinforced represented figures by focusing primarily on their contours and backgrounds. These figurative elements became a target of the formalistic criticism.
It doesn't seem Kollwitz's drawings and prints are midway between the traditional and the avant-garde or in an eclectic position. Extremely simple and understated in form, her pieces dedicate to a visual truth contemporary art has so far pursued.
Allegories Creating the Viewer
Kollwitz, in her 1920 diary, confessed that she had drawn a child even when he was crying with horror. At that time Kollwitz realized that she had no freedom to duck her responsibility.
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Käthe Kollwizt, "죽은 아이를 안은 여인( Woman with Dead Child), 1903, Ethcing & soft-groud etching on pale green tissue mounted
on wove paper,422X487 | She understood then that responsibility was to tire less express the distress and anguish of the oppressed. It implies that Kollwitz regarded her medium not merely as something to relish but as a way of practicing humanism. In her canvas, however, the oppressor is not concretely represented. The pain of the repressed is more amplified by the absence of oppressors.
Facing her work, the viewer feels the presence of power arousing the pain. The vivid scene of pain is about to spread before our eyes. This creation of the viewer is quite unique in art history.
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Käthe Kollwizt, "낫을 가는 여인" ( Whetting
the Scythe), Etching, 299X295, 1905 | The works Kollwitz's predecessors rendered provide the spectator with a place to meditate. The spectator sees them from the viewpoint of the third person. Accordingly, one can deal with anguish and depression in a nonchalant, comfortable manner. In contrast, works of the Expressionists bring about the viewpoint of the first person. The viewer thus always feels unrest and outrage from these works. The second person Kollwitz created realizes we must do something for the oppressed. The practice appears as a form of humanitarian attitudes such as consolation, tolerance and healing.
Although figures in her canvas look like accounting for the theater before its performance or performed scenes on the stage, she never gives up a representation of objects. Moreover, a scene, whether in her serial or independent work, apparently forms an allegory awakening a humanitarian responsibility. The site of an incident portrayed by lines and contours is not the one of the past or somewhere else but the one of the present and yourself.
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Käthe Kollwizt, "배고픔"(Hunger),
1923, 목판화, 55x34.5,
갤러리고도 소장, 서울
| The allegory makes us realize that the subject and force of oppression is not derived from any abstract power or the time but from "yourself". Kollwitz's allegory calls for the viewer to act and practice. Accordingly, the viewer is the object of healing and simultaneously the subject of causing a wound. Her allegory never appeals to the viewer to feel the distress and suffering of the oppressed.
In the 1980s my associates tried to hear the message of Kollwitz's work without noticing a specific fact in its surface. They strived to discover the fact in their auditory hallucination of the inner self. Kollwitz's graphics never stir up the viewer, instead they emphasize aspects of a sufferer, thereby provoking the viewer's sympathy.
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Käthe Kollwitz's graphics, which seem like a narrative statement of an incident, are not purely abstract as well as Expressionist, a style that endeavored to feature the demolition of humanity during the two World Wars and under a fin-de-siecle situation. With momentarily reacting hand gestures and drawings, Kollwitz attains immediacy, directly revealing the vitality of materials and the process of creation.
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Käthe Kollwizt, "포로들"( Prisoners), Etching &
soft-ground etching, 1908
| She responds to the avant-garde in this way and accomplishes literality by clearly rendering the contours of a figure. With the change of successive scenes and allegories she synthetically presents the matter of visual forms and reality.
Her artistic tendency may not entirely correspond to the flow of contemporary art that increasingly becomes more purely abstract, throwing away a realistic representation. An act of representation often relies on the memory and experience of humans, while to achieve purity in form is an attempt to escape from such elements. Not only Kollwitz but also her contemporaries had difficulty in selecting one out of the two. By unveiling such purity through visual literality and by accomplishing it through conceptual-based allegories, she has already integrated them.
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| Jasper Johns, Flag |
I remember here some artistic tendencies that justified eclecticism in American art. One of them is the eclectic ambiguity of Jasper Johns(1930- ) which is regarded as a birth of new meanings in art. KätheKollwitz, however, announced she had previously acquired such meanings by incorporating visually apparent shapes into conceptual associations.
Severed from the hope and expectation of the 1980s, we are now experiencing rampant ambiguityand its modifications. Without noticing such eclecticism, we pay too much attention to hearing nothing but the message of her art? |
