“Zeitgeist” – Select Germanic art on view at the Getty
“A Walk at Dusk” (about 1830-1835), by Caspar David Friedrich. Courtesy The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
It’s not easy to pack a big century into a small show, and “Zeitgeist: Art in the Germanic World, 1800-1900” can only selectively hint at the richness and variety of work that was created in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia during the 19th Century. Curated by Lee Hendrix, senior curator of drawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum, this thoughtfully assembled glimpse (comprised of paintings, drawings, and prints) nonetheless has its treasures and a few surprises that make it very much worth seeing.
“A Swan Among the Reeds, by Moonlight” (September 18, 1852), by Carl Gustav Carus. Courtesy The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
“Zeitgeist” (meaning spirit of the age) is a tidy overview that seems to spring from two painters who were active just before and during the early 1800s, Caspar David Friedrich and Philipp Otto Runge (for years, German Romanticism had scant presence in the Getty collection). Friedrich, in particular, has emerged – along with Turner and Constable in England, and Géricault in France – as one of the key artists of the era. Until the early 1970s, when Helmut Börsch-Supan’s sumptuous monograph was published in English, one could not find a decent book about him in this country. No American museum had any of his oil paintings. They’re hard to come by at any rate, but over the years, one by one, the Kimbell (1984), the Getty (1993), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2000), and the National Gallery of Art (2004) have each managed to add one to their collection. The best of these, somber and spiritual, is the Getty’s “A Walk at Dusk,” and it’s the highlight of the current exhibition. I mentioned “surprises.” Three additional Friedrichs, although not oil paintings, are on view (two of these borrowed for the occasion), including “View toward Cape Arcona, Rügen,” done in graphite, pen and brown ink and wash.
Runge, like Friedrich, had pantheistic leanings, meaning that both men felt that the Divine was in all things natural, and so their landscapes are infused with the ineffable. Runge had big plans and mighty concepts, Wagnerian almost, but without the bombast. Money troubles pushed him from Dresden (a hub of early Romanticism) to Hamburg (more of a trading port), and then an early death at age 33 curtailed his potential. His “Times of the Day” cycle in oil remained unfinished, although it is represented here by a suite of four prints (recent acquisitions of the Getty Research Institute) which I believe were among the many preliminary studies for the larger and more complex series.
The late 18th and early 19th century is sometimes called The Age of Goethe, and certainly Goethe, along with Beethoven in music, was an impetus for many Romantic artists, visual and otherwise. What also fired them up, at least early on, was the contagious zeal and idealism fostered by the French Revolution, at least until its chaotic and destructive underside came to light. After Napoleon rose to power, and the German principalities found themselves at war with France, a sense of united patriotism influenced and inspired the work of many German artists (Friedrich being a good example of this).
Also key to the “Zeitgeist” exhibition are works by Friedrich Overbeck and Peter Cornelius, two of the better known Nazarenes, a group of young painters (proto Pre-Raphaelites, in a way) who traveled to Italy, wore their hair long and dressed simply, and took Raphael as their model. That is, they often painted in the bright, flat, warm colors of the Italian Renaissance. Goethe didn’t care for them and neither did Friedrich. Despite their youth (and more than a few of them died young, too), they were serious about their work, and contemporary art surveys always give them a few pages.
“Spring Has Arrived” (1870), by Ludwig Richter. Courtesy The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Meanwhile, the Romanticism of Friedrich and kindred spirits such as Ernst Ferdinand Oehme, who is represented here, and Karl Blechen, who is not, eventually gave way to Biedermeier art, this being mostly genre pictures that were cheery and pleasant but not very compelling (I’m tempted to reference Norman Rockwell). Ludwig Richter seems to have edged into this category – his “Spring Has Arrived” from 1870 is in the show – and one might think the same of Moritz von Schwind and Carl Spitzweg (fairy tale late Romantics of a sort).
Even if he often imitated his friend and mentor Caspar David Friedrich, Carl Gustav Carus produced a notable body of work, all the more so since his day job was as a physician. A recent acquisition by the Getty, and definitely one of my favorites here, is his “A Swan Among Reeds, by Moonlight,” done in charcoal with white chalk on brown paper. It’s a melancholy work created for an ill daughter who soon passed from this world.
At the latter end of the century we switch over to Vienna, which means Gustav Klimt, of course, but also Alphonse Mucha and Frantisek Kupka. Mucha’s “Study for the Poster ‘Fruit,’” from 1897, was lent by collectors Eva and Brian Sweeney, founders of ESMoA.
Other noteworthy pictures include Wilhelm von Schadow’s portrait of his father, the renowned sculptor Johann Gottfried von Schadow, the latter perhaps best known for the “Quadriga” (1793) atop the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. And then there is the younger von Schadow’s drawing of his friend and fellow artist Joseph Wintergerst, the latter a Nazarene painter who didn’t die young, and whose “Christ as the Good Shepherd” is also on view. Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld’s ink drawing, “Siegfried Battles with the Gatekeeper,” is a reminder that the “Nibelungenlied” – especially after Wagner set his sights on it – was prominent in the cultural history of the time.
Works by Carl Rottmann and Joseph Koch are also in the show, but there are many lesser known artists who are featured, and these include Heinrich Reinhold, Victor Paul Mohn, Albert Venue, Ernst Fries, Carl Barth, and Friedrich Preller, and the Austrians Peter Fendi and Thomas Ender. Admittedly these artists may be more influential than I realize, but then consider some of the artists from the century who aren’t represented: Feuerbach, Böcklin, Menzel, Liebermann – all of whom could hold their own in a solo exhibition.
“Girl Shading Her Eyes” (about 1908), by Frantisek Kupka. Courtesy The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Gift of Richard A. Simms in Memory of James N. Wood (1941-2010), President and Chief Executive Officer of the J. Paul Getty Trust 2007-2010
As noted, this is just a peek into an almost fathomless world of great art, and although it is by some standards a minor exhibition, it’s also a low-key delight that elicits our curiosity and invites our contemplation.
Zeitgeist: Art in the Germanic World, 1800-1900 is on view through May 17 at the J. Paul Getty Museum in the Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles. Hours, Tuesday through Friday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Free; parking $15. Call (310) 440-7300 or go to getty.edu. ER