Art as the Erotic - Marcella
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Art as the Erotic
How We Observe Sex in Art
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| Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Marcella, 1909-1910 |
The above describes the joint-efforts of Ernst Kirchner and three other German artists who created the Art movement known as Die Brücke (The Bridge). The movement's goal was to coerce artists to live according to the "savage" lifestyle - free from all urban and otherwise modern influence.
Freedom being the chief principle of the Die Brücke, the artists also wished to embrace sexual freedom. Determining that the people of Malaysia and Polynesia were to be considered "primitive," the artist believed them also to be openly promiscuous - largely a misinterpretation. The reductionist interpretation these artists assumed gave rise to the number of Asian women depicted in Die Brücke paintings.
Kirchner's Marcella would unequivocally fall under the aforementioned category. His subject, presumably Marcella, sits both cross-armed and legged atop a van Gogh reminiscent seat-cover. Observe the "discordant hues." Kirchner gives the pre-pubescent girl many markers for innocence: the school ribbon, her flattened chest, and large benevolent eyes, which opposes the nature of her profession - prostitution. This feeling of innocence breaks down further with the extremely suggestive nature of the painting. Under Kirchner's pretense of "studying the nude in all its simplicity," we have little basis to believe that this subject-painter relationship was strictly fantasy.
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