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(bouncy piano music)

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>> We're looking at a painting at the

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Museum of Modern Art by
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.

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It's Street Scene Dresden
and it dates to 1908.

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>>Kirchen is known as
an expressionist artist.

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That's his classification.

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>> He would become part of a group

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called Die Brucke.

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>> Yes, The Bridge.

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>> The Bridge, as they called themselves.

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>> What did the bridge mean?

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What was it a bridge to and from?

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>> From the past to the future.

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>> Well yes, from the past to the future,

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but it refers really
directly to Nietzsche.

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>> Really?

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>> I didn't know that. I
didn't know that either,

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but it makes it much more interesting.

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>> Thus, speak Die Brucke.

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The bridge from civilization
to the Uberwanch,

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Crossing the bridge, it's a
journey of self-discovery,

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of individual self-actualization.

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>> There were so many German artists

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and craftsmen that were
really interested in

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Nietzsche at this moment, right?

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>> Obsessed is a better word.

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>> Yes, yes.

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>> What was it about Nietzsche?

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>> Well, he was interested in taking apart

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ideas of morality which
constricted culture so much,

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I think all over Europe
but especially in Germany.

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I think the young artists, I think Kirchen

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was not even 30 at this point,

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they're all pretty young,

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and they're really interested in renewal

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and the new.

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>> Germany was late coming to the

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Industrial Revolution, right?

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>> Yes.

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>> There's a lot of
change that's happening

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in a very compressed time period.

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>>They, in the later 19th Century, really

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tried to catch up to England and France

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and they worked really hard to do that.

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Then there was a lot
of growth really fast,

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but there are all these culture morays

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that they worked really
hard to break out of

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and Nietsche was totally
influential and inspirational

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because he posited all these
ways of breaking out of.

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>> It was very constrictive, proper.

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>> Accountable for..

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>> Yes, yes so that you wouldn't be

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proper and contained.

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>> Even in this painting,
there is a kind of isolation

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amongst those figures, isn't there?

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>> Definitely.

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>> Even though it's a
crowded, really dense scene;

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this is a pretty wild painting really.

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>> I have to say I know
that you like this painting.

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>> I do; I love this painting.

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>> I have always really not.

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>> I love this painting. (laughter)

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>> Right, so I want to
hear from both of you then.

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>> Why do you not like this painting?

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>> It feels very like
a man looking at women

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on the street and I know that they're...

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I don't know; I guess for me it doesn't

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build all that much more
on the 19th Century,

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on Munch's Street Scene
of Karl Johan Strasse.

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>> Right, from 1892.

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>> That kind of interest
in psychological angst

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and alienation in the modern world

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and using color to describe those things

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and brush work.

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This, as a symbolist
artist, I really like this.

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>> So did the Germans by the way.

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>> Yeah.

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>> They really heroized him, right?

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>> Then when I get to this and the colors

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become more garish and more difficult,

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the composition a little more disjointed,

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the brush work more open,

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I'm not sure how much this adds.

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I guess there's something
uncomfortable to me

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about the way that he's
looking at the women here.

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>> For me, the color
and garishness is what

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attracted me to it.

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I love the distortion.

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I love the green; I love the orange.

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I love the orange tracing
around the woman's hat.

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It's glowing.

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I just love looking at that.

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I feel like it's neon.

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If you look again at
the entire composition,

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I love things that kind of pop out

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at different moments.

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I think it is about
looking and it is about

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voyeurism and it is about the male gaze.

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If you look on the right
side of the painting,

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I love that he's caught halfway

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out of the composition.

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De'Gaulle did that in 1872.

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I think for me this
sort of feels very much

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about isolation and German angst.

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>> The point that you were
making about De'Gaulle

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I thought was an interesting one

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because in some ways

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France is going through those issues

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when De'Gaulle was painting and Germany is

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a little bit later, but
that doesn't make this

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not authentic,

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an authentic expression of that moment.

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I'm not saying that
they're the same thing,

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but the issue is industrial alienation and

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the issue of urban
alienation I think are both

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very important issues in

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both of those painter's work.

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This is clearly a 20th Century work.

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There are lessons that have learned and

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freedoms that have been generated from

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post-Impressionism and from other artists.

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>> I think of Fauvism.

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>> Exactly.

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>> Just the coloration I
think for me is something

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that makes it extremely
early 20th Century.

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>> It's not the beauty of Fauvism.

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>> No, it's not.

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>> This is really a kind of aggressive.

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>> I like that.

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>> So Van Gogh's Night
Cafe, he wanted to give

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the Night Cafe a sense
of darkness and misery

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by means of red and green.

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That's what Van Gogh said

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20 or 30 years before this.

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He's got that horrible pink
color in that painting.

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>> Maybe the power here is the very thing

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that you don't like which
is the women as subject.

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>> Well, I know that he's doing images of

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prostitutes on the street and I guess

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that knowing that informs

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my looking at this painting.

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It starts to make me really
worried about the way

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that modern historians
look at these images.

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>> I think that his, because
I think of his prostitute,

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the streetwalker scenes
as five years later.

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>> He's in Berlin, right?

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>> He's in Berlin and they're in like

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Potsdam or Platts and Friedrichshafen,

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those main city centers
and where the women...

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That's a lot more
strident and the women are

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definitely the focus of the male gaze.

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There are a lot of men kind of circling

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around the women.

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Those are less interesting to me.

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Also, I think just even
in terms of looking at

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the color and composition
for some reason and I

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know that a lot of people like those more.

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His style is more developed

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and he's more mature as an artist.

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I like that this is more raw.

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Kirchen, he's really
focusing on that authentic,

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kind of direct engagement with the

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experience of the city,

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the electric, the movement.

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>> A kind of constant
shift and change here

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as if all of those voids,
that wonderful pink area,

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is constantly changing and shifting as the

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figures that define that space move.

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>> I feel like he's
experimenting with something.

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>> Could we see the
women here as sympathetic

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in some way, maybe if I wasn't reading it

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through the guise of those later images of

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prostitutes on the street.

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She does look out at us.

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She's lit by the lights of the city.

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When you said neon, I
could sort of feel that,

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those kinds of lights maybe in the

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dusk in the city.

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She looks out at us.

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>> Well, they don't look to me honestly

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like prostitutes.

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>> Right, I'm saying
they're bourgeois women,

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but maybe there is something

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sympathetic about her
if we don't look at her

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through the lens of those later images.

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>> I think there is.

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I guess to me it just seems like

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these isolated figures and that's what

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attracts them to me.

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Like it's a theater; if
you look at the side,

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there's almost like a pillar figure,

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of that male figure,

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kind of holding the
picture together and it

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pulls your eye in and he's right there and

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he's sort of between you
and the female figures.

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Then everything kind
of recedes behind that

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diagonally to the left in the back.

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You see the girl in the center stage.

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>> What makes it theatrical?

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>> I think the lighting and the way the

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figures are arranged.

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>> That could almost be limelight

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coming from below.

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What I love about it
is, although it's a city

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and you have the slightest
trace of the trolley track,

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there's no architecture.

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The entire space is
defined by the occupation

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of these figures or their
occupation in space.

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In a sense, it's the city
defined by these people,

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defined by space itself shaped

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by this changing crowd
which I think is really

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an interesting idea.

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He's not using buildings.

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He's not even really using intersections.

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He's using people to define the space

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and then in a sense to build a city out of

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the people...

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>> Out of the shifting masses.

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This is Koenigstrasse in Dresden which is

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a main thoroughfare of
shopping so there's a lot of

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traffic and movement
and this is definitely

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part of a very well-known
street and a very

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well-known area and it's very populated.

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>> In the second half of the 19th Century

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when artists' painted street
scenes, like De'Gaulle

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because this looks to
me like he's looking at

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De'Gaulle, but there is more of a sense of

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architecture and place.

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>> Yes, there's nothing
here that's stable.

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Everything here will be
different in a moment

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and there's something sort
of wonderful about that.

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>> Yeah. I think I like
also just looking at that

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little girl and her big hat and her

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ugly, kind of claw-like hand.

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I think she's holding some kind of toy.

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>> Or flowers maybe.

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>> Or flowers or something,

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but in the painting it really looks scary.

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>> Yes, yes. There's also
the way that her legs

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are slightly splayed and there's something

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very ungainly.

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>> Her hair is kind of
dripping down the sides

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of her face.

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>> Yes, that kind of inelegant.

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Actually throughout the entire painting,

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there's this really
interesting tension between

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the effort and elegance in the dress

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but then the ungainliness
or the aggression of

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the representation.

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This is sort of wonderful
sort of back and forth.

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(bouncy piano music)