kirchner's berlin street scenes

!!!!!!!!UCL!History!of!Art!Ma!2013!–!2014!Core!Course!Essay!1!/!CQDG2 !!! !!

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Kirchner’s Berlin Street Scenes: Prostitution and the modern metropolis

Kirchner’s Berlin street scenes executed between 1913-1915 (fig.1-7) have

been the subject of an intense and long-lasting debate in scholarly literature. Since

World War II, the art historical discourse around the street scenes concentrated almost

exclusively on seeing these paintings as signs of the alienating urban experience.1

This predominant analysis stems mainly from Kirchner’s distinctive Berlin style in

contrast to his earlier periods, such as the Dresden years; from his set of themes, in

which prostitutes are the main protagonists; from the rapid emergence of Berlin as a

modern metropolis and its subsequent controversial modernity; and from George

Simmel’s theories and their popularity in Berlin before 1914. Simmel’s essays, such

as ‘The Philosophy of Money’2, ‘Prostitution’, ‘Fashion’, and ‘The Metropolis and

Mental Life’,3 have been so closely interrelated with Kirchner’s Berlin street scenes

that it can be assumed many scholars not only supposed that Kirchner was aware of

them, but even more that he was actively engaging with them. Furthermore,

Kirchner’s own writings have been seen as signs of his own urban anguish. It is true

that the street scenes are inextricably linked to the emergence of Berlin as a modern

city. However, art historians have tended to equate the troubling social and

economical conditions of Berlin in the tumult of industrialization and Kirchner’s

imagery. In this essay I will outline this predominant discourse by bringing forward

the positions of Rosalyn Deutsche4, Jill Lloyd5 and Donald Gordon6. Adopting

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!Charles!W.!Haxthausen,! ‘! “A!New!Beauty”;!Ernst!Ludwig!Kirchner’s! Images!of!Berlin’,!in!Berlin;(Culture(and(Metropolis,!ed.!by!Charles!W.!Haxthausen!and!Heidrun!Suhr,!(Minneapolis:!University!of!Minnesota!Press,!1990),!pp.!58Z86!(p.61).!2!Georg! Simmel,!The(Philosophy(of(Money,! trans.! by! Tom! Bottomore! and! David!Frisby,!3nd!edition,!(Boston:!Routledge!&!Kegan!Paul,!2004),!pp.!452Z463.!3!George! Simmel,! On( Individuality( and( Social( Forms;( Selected( Writings,! ed.! by!Donald!N.! Levine,!Heritage! of! Sociology! Series,! (Chicago:!University! of! Chicago!Press,!1971),!pp.!121Z26,!294Z323,!324Z339.!4 !Rosalyn! Deutsche,! ‘Alienation! in! Berlin;! Kirchner’s! Street! Scenes’,! Art( in(America,!71!(1983),!64Z72.!5 !Jill! Lloyd,! ‘The! Lure! of! the! Metropolis’,! in! German( Expressionism;(Primitivism(and(Modernity,! (New!Haven,!Conn:!Yale!University!Press!1991),!pp.!130-160.!


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Charles W. Haxthausen’s perspective, as reflected in his article ‘ “A New Beauty”:

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Images of Berlin’, I am going to propose that Kirchner’s

street scenes are not signs of alienation and of a negative attitude towards the city, but

a new personal way of seeing the modern metropolis, a new beauty discovered in this

‘capital of all modern ugliness’.7

By 1913 Berlin was the third-largest city in Europe, after Paris and London,

having expanded from approximately 850 thousand inhabitants at the time of German

unification in 1871, to 2 million by the turn of the century.8 This dramatic increase in

population reflected its status as a newly industrialized, urban society. The poor

housing conditions that emerged as a result of this rapid growth, the aesthetically!unappealing!urban!architecture,!and!the!‘uncultured’!migrant!population!led Karl

Scheffler to parallel Berlin with an American microcosm.9 This phenomenal tempo of

development made Berlin the most modern city in Europe. Berlin’s distinctive

modernity created among German intellectuals and artists a polarization between

forward- and backward-looking tendencies. The modernist attitude towards the city

was affirmative and regarded the city as a locus where nature and artifice could

coexist in balance and create a new modern beauty.10 Conservatives saw Berlin as the

city that best indicated modernity’s negative effects, as site of the negation of freedom

of the spirit, which came in stark contrast with their ideas about the spiritual unity of

Heimat (Homeland) and, to quote Lukács, their ‘romantic anticapitalism’. They

praised Kultur (Culture) as opposed to Zivilisation (Civilization), Gemeinschaft

(Community) in contrast to Gesellschaft (Society) and the authenticity of nature in

contrast to the artifice of the city.11 And it is exactly this negative tendency towards

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!6!Donald! E.! Gordon,! ‘Social! Phychology’,! in! Expressionism;( Art( and( Idea,! (New!Haven:!Yale!University!Press,!1987),!pp.!122Z173.!7!Karl!Scheffler!quoted!in!Haxthausen,!‘!“A!New!Beauty”!’p.!59.!8!Lloyd,!‘Lure!of!the!Metropolis’,!p.!130.!!9!Lothar!Müller,!‘The!Beauty!of!the!Metropolis;!Toward!an!Aesthetic!Urbanism!in!TurnZofZtheZCentury!Berlin’,!in!Berlin;(Culture(and(the(Metropolis,!ed.!by!Charles!W.!Haxthausen!and!Heidrun!Suhr,!(Minneapolis:!University!of!Minnesota!Press,!1990),!pp.!37Z55!(p.!41).!!!10!Lloyd,!‘Lure!of!the!Metropolis’,!pp.!130Z33.!11!K.!Michael!Hays,!‘Tessenow’s!Architecture!as!National!Allegory;!Critique!of!Capitalism!or!Protofascism?!’,!Assemblage,!8!(1989),!105Z121!(p.!106)!


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the modern metropolis upon which the art historical discourse contextualizing

Kirchner’s street scenes was largely based.

Rosalyn Deutsche in her essay ‘Alienation in Berlin’ attempts a political

reading of the paintings and links the street scenes with Simmel’s essays on

‘Prostitution’ and ‘Fashion’. She identifies Berlin as a big capitalist city that best

portrays the dominance of the money economy. Within this capitalist center,

Kirchner’s Berlin street scenes are not just echoes of alienation, but conscious

observations of the effects of the money economy.12 And it is in the context of this

money economy that the figures of the paintings function as commodities. Both the

set of themes- prostitutes and their clients- as well as Kirchner’s distinctive style- the

severe spatial distortions and harsh, electric color- are manifestations of the process of

‘objectification of human relationships’.13 Deutsche grounds this interpretation in the

element of the store window, which is depicted in two of the street scenes, ‘Five

Women on the Street’ (fig. 1) and ‘The Street’ (fig. 3). In these pictures the interaction

between men and women is an interaction between buyer and seller.14

Kirchner’s feelings towards the prostitutes, as reflected in his own writings,15

have produced many different interpretations among art historians. For Deutsche,

Kirchner’s prostitutes do not indicate empathy, nor are they alter egos of the artist’s

inner world, as with Haxthausen’s position, but they are ‘emblems for a specific

social order’,16 emblems of the commodification of sexuality.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!<http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3171017?uid=3738032&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102954680901>![accessed!8!November!2013]!12!Deutsche,!‘Alienation!in!Berlin’,!69.!!13!Ibid.,!69.!However,!for!Deutsche!Kirchner’s!distinctive!style!was!an!attempt!to!“touch!the!alienated!world!he!depicted”!and!to!“reinfuse!some!measure!of!humanity”!into!the!world.!!14!Ibid.,!71.!15!“I am now myself like the prostitutes I painted. Whisked away, gone the next time.” Kirchner’s letters to Scheffler as quoted in Haxthausen, ‘ “A New Beauty” ’, p. 78. !16!Deutsche,!‘Alienation!in!Berlin’,!72.!


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Donald E. Gordon in his posthumously published book ‘Expressionism: Art

and Idea’, presents a rich discussion of 20th century Expressionism. Throughout this

book he considers the intellectual environment within which artists work as

inextricably linked with the birth of their artistic style. In this context, Kirchner’s

street scenes do not express merely affirmative or negative feelings towards the city,

but embody the ambivalent tendency towards Berlin, seen both as a brutal arena of

life struggle and as a place bursting with the exciting and electric energy of life.

Kirchner’s street scenes embody this ambivalence towards the city ‘as a place of both

decadence and vitality’.17

On the dominant theme of prostitution Gordon, like Deutsche, considers the

streetwalkers to be products of the objectification of human relationships inherent in

the capitalist economy. But for Gordon these figures also suggest ‘the sensuous

excitement of forbidden sin- desirable and guilt-laden at once’18 and thus embody the

ambivalence between vitality and decadence in Berlin itself. Kirchner’s prostitutes

also function as both bourgeois and anti-bourgeois subject matter, illustrating an

important part of the middle class entertainment that was simultaneously disowned by

bourgeois conventional morality.

Kirchner’s identification with the prostitutes is part of the artist’s own identity

crisis: both the physiological and psychological transformation during 191319 and the

confusion of sexual identity; a confusion which Gordon identifies in such works as

the ‘Eternal Longing’ (fig. 8).20 In this work an androgynous element is implicit,

which insinuates the ambiguous relationship between Kirchner’s masculine and

feminine side. Gordon also sees a parallel between Otto Weininger’s ideas about

androgyny and Kirchner’s own concern about his feminine substance.21 This confused

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!17!Gordon,!‘Social!Phycology’,!p.!136.!18!Ibid.,!p.!137.!19!Sherwin!Simmons,!‘Ernst!Kirchner's!Streetwalkers:!Art,!Luxury,!and,!Immorality!in!Berlin,!1913Z16’,!The(Art(Bulletin,!82!(2000),!117Z148!(p.!132)!<!http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3051367?uid=3738032&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102955087781>![accessed!6!November!2013]!20!Gordon,!‘Iconography’,!in!Expressionism;(Art(and(Idea,!(New!Haven,!Conn:!Yale!University!Press,!1987),!pp.!26Z68!(p.!18).!!21!Ibid.,!p.!54.!!


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sexual identity was for Gordon the main reason for Kirchner’s identification with the

prostitutes.

In her book ‘German Expressionism: Primitivism and Modernity’, Jill Lloyd

draws a parallel between Kirchner’s vision of modernity and the alienating conditions

which Simmel, in his essay ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’, had described as

characteristics of the modern state. Lloyd agrees with! Rosalyn! Deutsche! that! the!street!scenesZ!with!their!harsh!fluorescent!colors,!primitive!maskZlike!faces,!and!angular! formsZ! suggest! the! objectification! and! commodification! of! human!relations!inherent!in!the!economic!exchange!of!the!capitalist!metropolis.!For her

the streetwalkers are ‘emblems of urban psychology in the modern age’.22 The

prostitutes signify the emergence of the modern woman within the metropolis and

show the transformation of women through fashion ‘from frugal German housewives

into fashionable ladies’.23 What is more, these elongated figures with their blasé

indifference are artificial products, which mark the ‘substitution of the individual by

the crowd’.24 !

An element that Lloyd adds to the existing discourse is that of crowd

psychology and its subsequent spiritual distance. Based on Simmel’s ideas, who

remarks that it is within the city crowd ‘that bodily proximity and crowding first make

spiritual distance truly visible’, she observes that in ‘Five Women on the Street’ (fig.

1) the figures, despite their physical proximity, are mentally estranged from each

other. 25 Lloyd also examines Kirchner’s use of geometrical pictorial forms in

accordance to Worringer’s notion of abstraction, who proposes that the urge to

abstraction is the outcome of a greater inner unrest inspired in (primitive) man by the

hostile, unknown phenomena of the outside world.26

Charles W. Haxthausen in his article ‘ “A new Beauty”: Kirchner’s Images of

Berlin’ shifts the denominator of the above arguments and proposes that Kirchner’s

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!22!Lloyd,!‘Lure!of!the!Metropolis,!p.!147.!23!Simmons,!‘Art,!Luxury,!and!Immorality’,!1.!!24!Lloyd,!‘Lure!of!the!Metropolis’,!p.!153.!!25!Ibid.,!p.!150.!26!Ibid.,!p.!147.!


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Berlin street scenes are not the locus of alienation, but on the contrary the locus of a

new beauty. It is very important for the grounding of his argument that he discusses

these images in relation to the earlier Impressionistic treatment of Berlin and does not

see them as one more aspect of the negative Expressionist representation of the city,

as Gordon does. Unlike the French Impressionists who embraced Paris, in the

paintings of the German Impressionists there is no representation of the contemporary

urban reality. It was through the German Expressionists that the breakthrough to

modernity was achieved. The beauty of modern Paris may not have had an equivalent

in Berlin, but (German) Expressionism- by taking the city as a subject matter- came to

function as the analog of French Impressionism in art, and Kirchner became ‘the first

major German painter of modern life’.27

For Haxthausen, Kirchner’s images do not proclaim the equation of

industrialization with ugliness; rather, they manifest a new personal way of seeing the

city. Additionally, his widely misinterpreted Berlin style expresses not the

estrangement of the individual psyche but the vibrancy of contemporary life, within

which Kirchner discovered a distinctively modern beauty, a beauty perceived not in

the buildings or the avenues but in the dynamism of movement; his ‘lines of force’

were ‘aspects of a sophisticated aesthetic strategy’.28 For Haxthausen there is indeed a

parallel between Simmel and Kirchner, since they both saw the city as a locus of

intensified stimulation. But in contrast to Simmel, Kirchner saw these stimulations as

positive and inspirational, since ‘for Kirchner what was externally dissociated was

internally fused’. 29

In Kirchner’s ambiguous choice to take the prostitutes as his primary symbol,

Haxthausen does not see an implicit social or moral criticism, but Kirchner’s

‘commitment to an art based on direct experience’.30 Rampant in Berlin at that time,

prostitution was a big-city phenomenon caused in some measure by the rapid shifts in

population. Streetwalkers were commonplace, especially since bordellos had been

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!27!Haxthausen,!‘!“A!New!Beauty”!’,!p.!73.!!28!Haxthausen,!‘!“A!New!Beauty”!‘,!p.!69.!!29!Ibid.,!pp.!68Z29.!!30!Ibid.,!p.!72.!!


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made illegal there in the mid-nineteenth century.31 And since Kirchner draw his

stimulus for creation from the life of the city, he couldn’t avoid the depiction of

prostitutes and hence they by necessity became the dominant theme in his paintings.

Haxthausen finds sympathy in Kirchner’s feelings towards the prostitutes and also

supposes that Kirchner, a child brought up in a provincial environment, saw the

prostitutes as a symbol of sexual liberation, of free love disengaged from conventional

morality and as vehicle for the eroticization of the mechanized city.32

These various readings provide, through their different points of view, a very

rich ground for the interpretation of the Berlin street scenes. One can trace a common

element in Gordon’s, Deutsche’s and Lloyd’s streams of thought. They all take as

their point of departure the belief that a work of art expresses a zeitgeist and thus

reflects the social context of its environment. And it is through this belief that they

reach the conclusion of urban alienation. Rosalyn Deutsche’s work is mainly

concerned with such interdisciplinary topics as art and urbanism, especially in New

York City during the ‘50s.33 So this reading of Kirchner’s imagery as the effect of

urban experience is part of her own wider project. However, adopting a Marxist

perspective she is dangerously close to an idealistic argument and use of material

thinking. Gordon throughout his book uses the tools of the social historian and

attempts to embed the art works in their social and intellectual milieu. His reading of

Kirchner’s images is inextricably linked with this attempt and thus seen as attached to

the German Expressionists’ vision towards the ambivalence inherent in the modern

city. Additionally, Lloyd’s interpretation is part of a wider discussion between the

relationship of primitivism and modernity and hence she sees the Berlin street scenes

as the outcome of the collision of balance between the modern and the primitive. In

Kirchner’s Berlin period the two merge but disruptively.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!31!Simmons,!‘Art,!Luxury,!and!Immorality’,!72.!!32!Haxthausen,!‘!“A!New!Beauty”!‘,!pp.!84Z85.!!33!See!for!example!Deutsche’s!essay,!‘Uneven!Development:!Public!Art!in!New!York!City’,!October,!47!(1988),!3Z52.!!!!


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Haxthausen’s interpretation is totally different. He believes that Kirchner, by

taking the city as his subject matter, worked like a French Impressionist and

affirmatively embraced Berlin. Kirchner saw his work as an ‘aestheticization’ of

modern life. For Haxthausen these images do not express a particular zeitgeist.

Kirchner’s art was unmediated by culture, being a personal, purely optical response to

the city. Haxthausen’s intention is not to utilize historical facts or social realities, but

to uncover what Kirchner was feeling; what was inside of him; he tries to see and

present Berlin as Kirchner would have seen it. Moreover, he takes the artist as the

source of meaning and sees the work of art as the expression of the creator and of his

own unique subjectivity. Haxthausen uses here the Hermeneutics method of text

interpretation, which began as the interpretation of biblical texts. Friedrich

Schleiermacher and Wilhelm Dithey broadened hermeneutics by articulating the inner

meaning, which is expressed in an artist’s work, and the possibility of symbolic

communication.34

It is true that Haxtausen’s methodology- his attempt to trace signs of human

experience in a work of art- allows for the possibility of misinterpretation. One could

also argue that Gordon’s, Deutsche’s and Lloyd’s arguments, based on historical

material, are more sophisticated than Haxthausen’s humanist perspective. Difficult

and dangerous as this perspective may be, Haxthausen achieves to ultimately discover

something really important: that Kirchner did not she the city merely as the ‘Whore

Babylon’, but as a place radiating the ecstasy of momentary perception and the

intensity of emotional life, within which he discovered the aesthetics of the modern

city. Haxthausen manages after all not only to enrich the predominant discourse, but

even more to change forever the direction of its flow.

Word!Count:!2,!700

!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!34!Ramberg,!Bjørn!and!Gjesdal,!Kristin,!‘Hermeneutics’, in Stanford(Encyclopedia(of(Philosophy!<!http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hermeneutics/>![accessed!16!November!2013]!!


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Illustrations:!!

!Figure!1:!Kirchner,!Five(Women(on(the(Street,!1913.!Museum!Ludwig,!Cologne.!Oil!on!Canvas.!47!1/4!x!35!7/16”,!http://threadforthought.wordpress.com/2008/09/27/kirchnerZtheZberlinZstreet/!!


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Figure 2: Kirchner, Berlin Street Scene, 1913. Neue Galerie and Private Collection, New York. Oil on Canvas. 47 5/8 x 37 3/8”, <http://threadforthought.wordpress.com/2008/09/27/kirchnerZtheZberlinZstreet/>!


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Figure 3: Kirchner, Street, Berlin, 1913. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Oil on Canvas. 47 1/2 x 35 7/8”, <http://threadforthought.wordpress.com/2008/09/27/kirchnerZtheZberlinZstreet/>!


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Figure 4: Kirchner, Street Scene, 1914. Staatsgalerie, Stuttgard. Oil on Canvas. 49 3/16 x 35 13/16”, <http://threadforthought.wordpress.com/2008/09/27/kirchnerZtheZberlinZstreet/>!


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Figure 5: Kirchner, Two Women on the Street, 1914. Kunstsammlung!NordrheinZWestfalen,!Düsseldorf.!Oil on Canvas. 47 7/16 x 35 13/16”,!<http://threadforthought.wordpress.com/2008/09/27/kirchnerZtheZberlinZstreet/>!


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Figure 6: Kirchner, Potsdamer Platz, 1914. Nationalgalerie!Z!Staatliche!Museum,!Berlin.!Oil on Canvas. 6’ 6 3/4 x 59 1/16”,!<http://threadforthought.wordpress.com/2008/09/27/kirchnerZtheZberlinZstreet/>!


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Figure 7: Kirchner, Women on the Street, 1915. Von! der! Heydt! Z! Museum,!Wuppertal,!Germany.!!Oil on Canvas. 49 5/8 x 35 7/16”,!<http://threadforthought.wordpress.com/2008/09/27/kirchnerZtheZberlinZstreet/>!


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Figure 8: Kirchner, Eternal Longing (illustration for Petrarch’s ‘Triumph of Love’), 1918. Galleria Henze, Lugano. Woodcut. (Source: Gordon)


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Bibliography:

Haxthausen, Charles W., ‘ “A New Beauty”; Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s Images of Berlin’, in Berlin; Culture and Metropolis, ed. by Charles W.Haxthausen and Heidrun Suhr (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), pp. 58-86 Simmel, Georg, The Philosophy of Money, trans. by Tom Bottomore and David Frisby, 3nd edition, (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 2004), pp. 452-463 Simmel, George, On Individuality and Social Forms; Selected Writings, ed. by Donald N. Levine, Heritage of Sociology Series, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), pp. 121-26, 294-323, 324-339 Deutsche, Rosalyn, ‘Alienation in Berlin; Kirchner’s Street Scenes’, Art in America, 71 (1983), 64-72 Lloyd, Jill, ‘The Lure of the Metropolis’, in German Expressionism; Primitivism and Modernity, (New Haven, Conn : Yale University Press 1991), pp. 130-160 Müller, Lothar, ‘The Beauty of the Metropolis; Toward an Aesthetic Urbanism in Turn-of-the-Century Berlin’, in Berlin; Culture and the Metropolis, ed. by Charles W. Haxthausen and Heidrun Suhr, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), pp. 37-55 Hays, K. Michael, ‘Tessenow’s Architecture as National Allegory; Critique of Capitalism or Protofascism?’, Assemblage, 8 (1989), 105-121 <http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3171017?uid=3738032&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102954680901> [accessed 8 November 2013] Simmons, Sherwin, ‘Ernst Kirchner's Streetwalkers: Art, Luxury, and, Immorality in Berlin, 1913-16’, The Art Bulletin, 82 (2000), 117-148 <http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3051367?uid=3738032&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102955087781> [accessed 8 November 2013] Deutsche, Rosalyn, ‘Uneven Development: Public Art in New York City’, October, 47 (1988), 3-52 <http://www.jstor.org.libproxy.ucl.ac.uk/stable/778979> [accessed 10 November 2013] Ramberg, Bjørn and Gjesdal, Kristin, ‘Hermeneutics’, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy < http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hermeneutics/> [accessed 16 November 2013] Hermanson, Tove, ‘Kirchner & the Berlin Street’, Thread for Thought < http://www.threadforthought.net/kirchner-berlin-street/> [accessed 15 November] !

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