Exercise: Annotate a Self-Portrait, Part 4, Project 2

Self-Portrait as a Soldier (1915), Ernst Kirchner, 69 x 61 cm

The painting I have chosen for this annotation is Self-Portrait as a Soldier by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, painted in 1915 in oil on canvas, when he was thirty-five. As a driving force of Die Brucke (The Bridge) in 1905, Kirchner is one of the major artists of the 20th century - intense, passionate, neurotic and expressive - and a prolific self-portraitist.  “I paint,” Kirchner said, “with my nerves and my blood.  The heaviest burden of all is the pressure of the War and the increasing superficiality. It gives me incessantly the impression of a bloody carnival. I feel as though the outcome is in the air and everything is topsy-turvy.. All the same, I keep on trying to get some order in my thoughts and to create a picture of the age out of confusion, which is after all my function."

• In this portrait, Kirchner wears the uniform of driver in Field Artillery Regiment No. 75, for which he volunteered to avoid having to face the worst of the fighting in WW1. (He was in hospital at the time, recovering from general weakness and lung problems exacerbated by alcoholism and drug abuse, and would likely be anticipating a return to duty.) In a specific sense, it illustrates his worst fear; that the War would leave him mutilated and unable to paint; but in a general sense, the painting is voicing the angst of his generation - that civilisation would be destroyed and art would cease to exist. This topic was typical of the Expressionists at his time, but Kirchner added his own personal fear to the condemnation of war. It has been compared to Munch's "The Scream" (Springer), as the best example of the expressionists' style, although the evidence of planning in the composition led the painting to be described as "controlled expressionism" (Klaus-Peter Schuster) as the eye is led by careful placement along the horizontal and vertical axes to the focal point - the bloodless stump.

• The two figures in this portrait, artist-soldier and model, display tension in their body language. Both show unseeing eyes, Kirchner's without pupils and the model's without direction. Both also show mask-like faces, Kirchner's drawn and vacant-looking, with eyes reflecting the colour of his uniform; and the model gazing out as if waiting for instruction about a pose. The  artist  is without a brush or palette; both figures are unable to do the job the scene demands. 

  

  Artist and His Model (1910)

  This painting is in contrast to his earlier work, The Artist and his Model (1910), where Kirchner is smoking a pipe while confidently wielding brush and palette with his model seated in a scene that hinted at power and eroticism. In Self-Portrait as Soldier, Kirchner needs to hold on to the cushion/chair back on his left while he holds up his bloodless, gangrenous stump - his painting arm - and his cigarette dangles flaccidly from his mouth as if it symbolises his sexual impotence. It is as if the War has reduced him to a number, stopped his creativity, and left him powerless to engage with the opposite sex.

• Kirchner had studied architecture in Dresden, followed by brief technical studies in Munich, where he was exposed to a wide variety of creative influences, and decided to change course to a study of painting.  Although he denied being influenced by any other artists - he even repainted some works and changed the dates on others to "prove" that they predated Fauvism - his use of colour is reminiscent of Gauguin and his wild brushstrokes of van Gogh. He did openly admire the woodcuts of Durer,  and revived the tradition of woodblock printing. The lack of superfluous detail (typical of expressionism) in his work has its roots in wood-engraving. (For a more detailed look at the techniques and influences of Expressionism, see my earlier post on 16 Dec., 2013)

• 

  Street Scene, 1913

  The vivid pinks and reds which in previous paintings have hinted at excitement are here used to illustrate blood and skinless flesh, while the acidic greens which hint at decadence in his paintings of street scenes (as in Street Scene, 1913, opp.) are used to illustrate decay and putrefaction in Self-Portrait as a Soldier. Both his mental state and his artistic output were severely affected by WW1. His worst fears of injury or death were never to come true, as he never returned to the front; nor did he ever fully recover. Depression was to return in 1926 and he committed suicide in 1938. Although he saw himself as someone who worked in the German tradition, he became a victim of Nazi campaign against degenerate art and was eventually ostracised from mainstream German art.

Selz, Peter. "Kirchner's Self-Portrait as a Soldier in Relation to Earlier Self-Portraits." Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin 14, no. 3 (Spring 1957) - See more at: http://www.oberlin.edu/amam/Kirchner_SelfPortrait.htm#sthash.TpY6esB2.dpuf

References:
Springer, P. (2002), Hand and Head: Ernst Ludvig Kirchner's Self-Portrait as Soldier, University of California Press Ltd., London, UK

Laneyrie, N. (2004), How to Read Paintings, Chambers Harrap Publishers, Edinburgh, UK

Selz, P., Kirchner's Self-Portrait as a Soldier in relation to earlier Self-Portraits, in Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin 14, no 3, Spring 1957,pp 91-97

Wolf, R.,(2003), Kirschner: On the Edge of the Abyss of Time, Taschen Basic Art, Cologne, Germany

Selz, Peter. "Kirchner's Self-Portrait as a Soldier in Relation to Earlier Self-Portraits." Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin 14, no. 3 (Spring 1957) - See more at: http://www.oberlin.edu/amam/Kirchner_SelfPortrait.htm#sthash.TpY6esB2.dpuf

Selz, Peter. "Kirchner's Self-Portrait as a Soldier in Relation to Earlier Self-Portraits." Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin 14, no. 3 (Spring 1957) - See more at: http://www.oberlin.edu/amam/Kirchner_SelfPortrait.htm#sthash.TpY6esB2.dpuf