Expressionism Multiplied: Early Twentieth-Century German Posters between Art, Commerce, and Politics

Although German Expressionism is a term that circulates widely, German Expressionism is notoriously challenging to define. This dissertation constitutes an attempt to take up this challenge, proposing a new understanding of Expressionism that results from an investigation of the relationship between Expressionist painting and prints, and the most common form of imagery in early twentieth-century German public space-the color lithographic poster. To reveal implications of this dynamic, I examine representative examples of commercial posters and Expressionist art alongside early twentieth-century German art criticism, art historical writings, and discussions of advertising, all of which explore the specificity and inter-relatedness, or unrelatedness, of these types of pictures. Expressionism and posters emerge as occupying similar discursive positions within broader discussions about the status of the image in modernity, serving as flash points around which uneasiness about and hopes for the image and the status of art in modernity were articulated. My investigation spans the "Expressionist era" (1905-1921), beginning with its "birth" the formation of Kunstlergruppe Brucke in Dresden, and concluding with the year following its "death" in 1920, announced by its former advocate Wilhelm Worringer. I trace transformations in "Expressionism" as it shifted from naming early manifestations of German experimental art, to declaring an aesthetically driven socialist stance, to designating a repeatable style that could be used as readily for political posters as it could be for nightclub interiors, advertising, or feature films. Exceeding notions of "style" or "movement," Expressionism registered contemporary shifts in the field of the visual. It has operated, then and now, as a generative concept, producing ways of configuring and understanding the pictures that circulated in the public sphere. To do this, Expressionism required an extensive critical apparatus supported by sophisticated print media in order to stake its claim to specificity. Expressionism is thus a composite form in which diverse concepts of representation, art, kitsch, commercialism, consumerism, national identity, and social and cultural progressiveness and conservatism converged and collided. It is an interconnected web of picture and criticism, an adaptive yet distinct discursive apparatus that served as a resilient strategy for making sense of the visual world of modernity.