Expressionism and the Print:
Idealism Cut from the Block

Matthew Johnson

 

Printmaking, as a craft, became a central medium for German
Expressionist artists, especially as they tried to resolve problems with
artistic identity, reaching their intended audience, and the development
of their various styles. Art historian Thomas Friedrich, in his essay "A
Turn Toward the Public? The Expressionists' Media: Books, Posters,
Periodicals," notes that prints gave the Expressionists the chance to
make art out of a medium considered to be especially German, and yet, at
the same time, a medium that had just begun to emerge as an equal
alternative to painting, thanks to artists like Edvard Munch, Max
Klinger, and Emil Orlik (85). Although the initial desire of the German
Expressionists, beginning with the Brücke in 1905, was to break away
from traditional art of an often pretentious art community, the
Expressionists continued to use the print's German heritage,
particularly that of the woodcut, to reconsider what new German art
might offer after the First World War (1914-18).

In order to understand how and why the Expressionists used
printmaking as a primary means of artistic achievement, printmaking
techniques should be described briefly.* Three primary methods, etching,
engraving, and woodcut, all demand rigid and physically intense labor.
Lithography, another technique, differs from the previous three in that
it initially involves a sort of drawing, similar to drawing directly
onto paper. A lithographic stone is used for the initial drawing
surface, on which the artist uses a greasy crayon to create his or her
image. The entire stone is first dampened, onto which the greasy
printing ink is then rolled. Afterward, the ink easily wipes away from
the stone, as it is repelled by the water, but remains on the areas
treated with the crayon. After the stone is pressed onto paper, the ink
remaining on the areas treated by crayon transfers to the paper in a
direct reversal of the initial crayon drawing. The properties of the wax
allow for the finished print to retain the quality of the artist's line,
leaving the print looking much like a drawing (Griffiths 100). Ludwig
Meidner's Alter Mann (Old Man, Fig. 2), shows such markings. The
swirling gestures of Meidner's hand reveal the lines of age in the face
and beard of Meidner's subject. Roughly sketched areas of tone complete
the portrait. It is important to consider Meidner's markings as
facilitated by the freedom of lithographic technique, as other types of
printing do not allow for such speed of line and gesture.

Etching, conversely, involves the removal, rather than the
addition, of material from a metal plate using a metal etching needle.
The needle is used to cut into a soft coating across the plate called a
ground. The artist draws into the ground, creating lines on top of the
plate without actually removing the metal. After the ground is removed
by the artist's needle, he or she bathes the plate in acid, which eats
into the metal, exposed by the lines already removed from the ground.
The amount of time the plate spends in the acid bath determines how deep
the etched lines cut into the plate, and thus, how dark the etched lines
appear on printed paper. A longer acid bath creates deeper cuts, which
allow more ink to permeate the plate before it is run through the press.
This depth of cut creates the differences in line weight on each print.
After the artist finishes work on the metal plate, he or she (or in many
cases a professional printer), rolls ink onto the plate, wipes the
untouched surface of the plate clear, and then presses the plate onto
paper. Transfer occurs as the ink trapped in the cuts soaks into the
paper, leaving an exact reversed image of the graphic on the etched
plate (Griffiths 56). The process of bathing the plate multiple times to
layer line weight can be seen in Käthe Kollwitz's Beim Dengeln (Whetting
the Scythe, Fig. 3). Planes can be distinguished between the background,
the subject's face, and the hands and scythe in the foreground, all
created from different amounts of time spent in the acid bath at
distinct phases in the creation of the image. The printing process
becomes more complex in the etching technique, as the artist's markings
on the print depend not only on markings made directly onto the plate by
the needle, but also on a planned sequence of acid baths over which the
artist has less control.

Engraving, the technique of cutting directly into a metal plate
with pure force of the artist's hand and a tool called a burin, is a
more direct method than etching. Whereas acid pushes the process of
removal initiated by the artist in an etching, engraving engages the
artist all the way to the end of the creation of the image, and, as a
result, is much more labor intensive (Griffiths 38). Drypoint is a type
of engraving that does not remove the metal burr left on the plate by
the cuts; it remains, making a feathery line quality in the print, as
shown in Lovis Corinth's Bahnhof Tiergarten (Zoo Station, Fig. 4). The
lines in the tree foliage, and of the structure in the background of the
image, both exemplify this type of line. The effect is that objects move
in and out of focus according to the clarity of the line. In the case of
the trees, the leaves move out of focus and create a sense of movement,
as if a breeze had just rustled the branches in the scene. The
out-of-focus architecture in the rear of the picture plane aids
Corinth's illusion of depth.

Perhaps more raw and immediate than both etching and engraving
is the woodcut. Wood is removed from a clean block in order to create a
negative image, onto which ink is rolled, followed by pressing. The wood
makes its presence known, as ink often permeates the clean portions of
the block as well, revealing patterns of grain and texture.
Additionally, the final printed image is a negative of the image of the
cut block, as the face of the block holds the ink, rather than the cuts
(Griffiths 13). The print cut from the woodblock is imbued with more
evidence of process than any other technique, and this may be an
important reason why the Expressionists were drawn so forcefully toward
its expressive possibilities.

Friedrich notes that the woodcut in particular reserves an
important place in the history of German art. Early Expressionist
artists and their circles, especially the Brücke, praised Albrecht Dürer
as a master of the craft, and drew inspiration from his intricate
designs (85). And Friedrich notes that despite the Expressionists'
desire to break cleanly from artistic tradition, Dürer's woodcuts
aligned German Expressionism with German tradition in a way that could
revive a nationalistic enthusiasm in works coming from Germany (85).
Similarities between Dürer and the Expressionists end, however, with the
medium and culture, as the Expressionist lines cut into wood veered
sharply from Dürer's fanciful, intricate compositions. The artists of
the Brücke usually cut their own blocks, and sometimes even pressed
their own prints, whereas Dürer, and most woodcutting traditionalists,
favored the use of woodcutters who worked from artists' designs and
tracings (Griffiths 17). The wood, for the Expressionists, offered the
chance to call attention to the material through the style of the line.
Generally, Expressionist woodcuts use jagged lines and spaces, and they
stop short of the stylistic refinement that removes Dürer's images from
the woodcutting process from which they are created. Dürer's woodcuts
look like the drawings from which they are designed, but the
Expressionist blocks make no attempt to veil materiality. Gustav
Hartlaub, assistant director for the Mannheim Kunsthalle, and one of the
first historians to consider Expressionist printmaking, called attention
to the history of the woodcut in his book from 1920, Die neue deutsche
Graphik (The New German Print):

In the beginning was the woodcut... They are
like folksongs and folktales in which something of the sublime awe still
lingers...something of the grace that helped even the crudest craftsmen
during the Middle Ages to turn out his stammering to the praise of God
still floats over them; in them the clumsy outlines grow out of the wood
itself.... (qtd. in Long 142)

As opposed to the blank canvases on which the Expressionists
also cast their new ideas, printmaking demanded the cut into the surface
of a blank plate in order to create form out of the material itself.
Etching, engraving, and the woodcut demanded a precision and
craftsmanship that helped to define clear, graphic works in which the
Expressionist ideal crystallized. In fact, the removal of material form
the ground mirrors the way in which the Expressionists demanded a new
art. Their printed images are cut away from the ideal, untouched
material. In a sense, by removing material from the ground, the
Expressionists allowed their forms to materialize from a sort of ideal
found in the natural material itself. The illusion of the image is
always checked by the loud resonance of its natural source.

Consider, for example, Erich Heckel's Gerader Kanal (Straight
Canal, Fig. 1). The rough-hewn sky is marked by clouds gouged away from
the wood. The white in the sky shows the areas of removal, as if the
clouds built themselves out of a calm and flat darkness. The constructed
lines of the canal and landscape in the foreground operate similarly, as
the compositional lines, the path of the canal especially, recall the
latent flat plane of wood that precedes the artist's vision. Heckel's
process in making the print mirrors the actual labor of man in the
Belgian plain that he depicts, as the lines dug out of the block
represent the trenches that are the canal itself. The image seems to
mirror the Brücke's intention to rebuild society from an idealistic
base, as E. L. Kirchner explains in the Brücke program: "With faith in
evolution, in a new generation of creators and appreciators, we call
together all youth. And as youths, who embody the future, we want to
free our lives and limbs from the long-established older powers"
("Künstlergruppe" qtd. in Long 23). Heckel's image, and the clean block
from which it was made, seem akin to this ideology of youth and
vitality. Man's intervention into his own world, be it the canal cut
into the landscape, or the print cut from the wood, is in accord with
the call to youth that the Brücke make in their program. Art historian
Reinhold Heller describes this call for a utopian society in the context
of World War I: "Heckel's love of humanity corresponded to
Expressionism's anxiously hopeful wartime calls for a "new man" who
would transform society into a utopian socialist community of brotherly
love, overcoming the violence and destruction of war" (Brücke 95).
Heller continues to explain how images of landscape, like Gerader Kanal,
worked for Heckel as an escape from the chaos of war. Certainly the
serene agricultural plains of Northern Europe called to mind a utopian
space in opposition to the senseless battlefields of the war (95). In
Gerader Kanal, a church stands at the focal point of the perspectival
retreat into space, and, according to Heller, invites a metaphorical
reading of the meditative possibilities in such a utopian plain (95).
Utopia, as the Expressionists would have it, meant a break from the
antiquated laws that would hold the individual back from the sort of
expression that Heckel makes. Heckel demands, by calling attention to
the action of man in a built landscape, that the individual have the
power to intervene in his own world. In Gerader Kanal, man confronts his
environment with both technological innovation and a turn to religious
meditation. Heckel's print argues that humanity is not helpless, but
rather a creative, constructive force in a clean, open landscape.

Problematic to Heckel and the Brücke's cause, however, is the
implication that all individuals need adhere to the same sort of
revolutionary agenda. Heckel produces an individualized position in his
image by using a single-point perspective, addressing each viewer as he
steps before the print as if he were the singular witness to the land
and canal laid down before him. But each individual who steps before
Heckel's canal is forced into the same perspective. The canal suggests a
single direction toward the horizon, but would that path necessarily be
the one to lead toward utopia? Would the utopian vision necessarily be
the same for all those who dared to step into the modern, Expressionist
world? The drive to find such a utopian image during the violent
cleansing effect of World War I waned after the destructive consequences
of the war completely revealed themselves (see Cannon); artists like
George Grosz turned toward a critique of man's incompetence, rather than
suggesting his potential.

Although the war proved to dismantle many of the early utopian
ideals found in Expressionist printmaking, the prints continued to be
made, with the idea that they might be made more accessible to a public
disenchanted by galleries that collected audiences of people rich enough
to afford the art (see MacDonald). Subject matter turned to critique of
the war, as artists such as Grosz, Otto Dix, and Kollwitz began
producing images showing the atrocities of total violence. Expressionist
ideals changed over the course of the movement, but after the early
groups established printmaking as central to Expressionist thought, the
print once again proved to be a powerful option for the artist. After
the success of the Brücke in the print medium, printmaking earned new
esteem in the art world.

* My primary source for these methods is Griffiths. He attends to Brücke methods in even greater detail in
Carey and Griffiths.