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Tomasz Dziewicki // Primitive Ornament and Modern Painting. The Cases of Kirchner, Kandinsky and Klee

Primitive Ornament and Modern Painting. The Cases of Kirchner, Kandinsky and Klee
In the project titled Primitive Ornament and Modern Painting. The Cases of Kirchner, Kandinsky and Klee I analyse at how knowledge, part of primitivist discourse, shaped an avant-garde artwork. Circa 1900 academic art history turned into a new discipline called Weltkunstgeschichte in German-speaking world. An ornament was perceived as a basic visual impulse of every man, over the course of ages and world cultures. The artists interested in primitive cultures came into contact with theories due to professional training – Die Brücke artists as the novice architects in Dresden – and influential lectures – such as The Origins of Art by Ernst Grosse – but also as keen museum visitors in ethnological collections in Dresden, Berlin and Munich. The emphasis is placed on three particular cases in which an impulse of non-European culture is particularly evident: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s fascination with so-called Palau-Balken from Dresden collection, Wassily Kandinsky’s abstraction in the context of oriental ornament and Paul Klee’s early work in relation to the South American ornaments popularised in Germany by Theodor Koch-Grünberg.
[Caption: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Badende am Strand (Fehmarn), 1913, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, source: Wikimedia Commons]

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