Eugène Carrière, Der Schlaf (Jean-René Carrière), 1897, Lithograph
Photo: Berlin State Museums – Kupferstichkabinett/Dietmar Katz
Impressionism was born 150 years ago: in 1874, the first of eight “Impressionist” exhibitions took place in Paris. The artists exhibiting there became pioneers of European modernism. Today, Impressionism is one of the first avant-gardes that we learn about in school. Compared to what came after, it appears gentle and apolitical. The fact that it can still be exciting to deal with impressionism is shown by two exhibitions in Berlin – “Monet and the Impressionist City” in the Alte Nationalgalerie and “The Other Impressionism”. International prints from Manet to Whistler« in the Kupferstichkabinett – which set new accents and can significantly expand our idea of impressionism.
No French master is as familiar to us as Claude Monet. For the first time – in the Alte Nationalgalerie – it has been possible to bring together the three-part series of views of Parisian city life that he created in 1867 from Oberlin/Ohio, The Hague and Berlin. Monet painted these three city landscapes from the balcony of the Louvre – en plein air and from an elevated viewing point. He left tradition behind and turned to the new, modernized Paris. It was no longer about traditional vedute, but about the spontaneous, atmospheric atmosphere, the air and light painting so typical of Impressionism, which Monet transferred to urban space. »Le jardin de l’Infante« (1867): In the elongated portrait format, Monet shows the Panthéon in the background, obscures the view of the Pont Neuf through leafy trees, and lets the street vibrate with busy life with fleeting brush strokes, while the garden in the lower part of the picture remains in complete calm. At the same time as Monet, Auguste Renoir also began to capture the light-filled atmosphere on the streets of Paris (“Paris. L’Institut au Quai Malaquais”, 1872). In Gustave Caillebotte’s work, Paris dominates with its endless streets and vertical lines, while Camille Pissarro leads the people and cars into the deep space. In “La Seine au Pont Saint-Michel” (1900), Maximilien Luce combines the free brushwork of the Impressionists with the mosaic structure of pointillist painting. From his studio window, Henri Matisse can then paint the “Quai Saint-Michel” (1904) with arbitrary, unexpected colors and simplified, broken shapes, thus already announcing his new painting style, Fauvism. These images impress with their cosmopolitanism.
In the Kupferstichkabinett, painterly impressionism is contrasted with the other, unknown, graphic impressionism. This first had to be prepared and developed in the cabinet before it could be brought to our attention. A collection of impressionistic graphics by 40 European artists is presented, primarily from our own holdings. The predominant reduction to black and white in line art abstracts what is seen, allowing scope for the imagination to emerge.
First of all, it’s about the Cliché Verre, the magical process of using a glass printing plate as a negative, with which Camille Corot was the first artist to experiment and which Charles-Francois Daubigny and Théodore Rousseau perfected. The etching “Evening sun in the harbor of Antwerp” (1868) comes from the Dutchman Johan Barthold Jongkind: The light of the low sun is reflected in the light reflections on the water. Jongkind was also a teacher for the group of French painters who came together in Paris in 1862 under the name “Aquafortists”. The etching should be sketchy, but also expanded to include atmospheric and painterly effects. You should really be able to feel fog, light, humidity, coolness or warmth.
The painter-lithographers emerged from the circle of aquafortists. In Henri Fantin-Latour’s “The Embroiderers” (1898), the contours become blurred and envelop the figures in a shadowy existence that demonstrates inwardness. Edouard Manet’s chalk lithograph “The Horse Race” (1865) conveys the “impression of lightning-fast events” (Hans Wolfgang Singer). The shadow – the expansive surface in contrast to the delimiting line – became the dominant theme in lithography. The Neo-Impressionists around Paul Signac made the shadows colorful, and lithographic color printing seemed particularly suitable for the principle of color separation. Eugène Carrière enhanced the incorporeality of planographic printing and the resulting special delicacy of the tone through the inked form of lithography. He allows his portraits to emerge as if from a deep space. This is probably the essential characteristic of the “other impressionism”: to reproduce atmospheric moods between darkness and brightness, sharpness and blurriness, between objective or figural presence and its dissolution or disappearance.
When Impressionism had almost died down and a new style, Expressionism, began to assert itself, Max Liebermann, Max Slevogt and Lovis Corinth gave etching a new highlight: by concentrating on the essentials, the permeability to light and movement and the fleeting vibrations of the moment. While the loner Lesser Ury reflected the flair of the modern metropolis with his Berlin street scenes, Franz Skarbina had already given a nighttime scene the light effect of electric street lighting in his 1896 lithograph “Droschke im Regen”.
“Monet and the Impressionist City”, until January 26th, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin and “The Other Impressionism. International printmaking from Manet to Whistler”, until January 12th, Kupferstichkanbinett, Berlin
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