One of the schools of modern western literature and art, which occurred in the early period of World War I, prevailed in Germany, France, Russia and Nordic countries in 1930s. It is very popular and influential in painting, music, poetry, novels and drama. When and where did the word "expressionism" first appear? There are two opinions: one is that the French painter Julian first used this word at the Matisse Art Exhibition in Paris in 190 1; On the one hand, it is believed that the German painter Wollinger used this word for the first time in a paper in 19 1. The trend of expressionism literature originated in the field of German painting. The main representatives are Wollinger, Kandinsky and Ed Schmidt in theory, Monk, Zeca and Nold in painting, Strindberg and O 'Neill in drama, Kafka in novel, * * *, Schoenberg and Strauss in music.
The emergence of expressionism is a refutation of naturalism and impressionism. They see that naturalism only writes trivial details of things; Impressionism also mistakenly regards the limited feeling of an instant as the only object that art should express. Both of them are confused by the pure experience of external surface phenomena and satisfied with the narrow separation range, while the truth of the world exists in people's subjective illusion, which is a deeper image of things and a pure truth of things. Only by revealing this eternal and magical illusion can we show the essence of the existence of the universe, and this is the significance of art. They pointed out: "The world exists, and it is meaningless to just copy it." True art should be "not reality, but spirit" and "expression, not reproduction". The artist's full use lies in the subjective illusion, and grasping the illusion will grasp the true meaning of the world.
Expressionism painting's predecessors were German "Bridge Society" and "Yellow Knight", and then the rise of "New Objectivism School" pushed the expressionist movement to * * *. Expressionism painting abandoned the traditional artistic principles, demanding that the objective reality be distorted and exaggerated under the influence of subjective feelings, transforming the reality into something magical and deformed, and "pursuing a ghostly and deformed truth". They were dissatisfied that Impressionists only paid attention to the imitation of external objective things, and thought that works of art were the external expression of human inner needs and attached great importance to subjective spirit. The so-called internal needs refer to people's basic emotions, intuition, dreams, subconscious and so on. Expressionism painting, all the images depicted in the painting are the explosion of the writer's subjectivity. Shape, color and line should be combined subjectively according to the needs of feeling to convey the inner illusion. Expressionism painting's anti-classical art is quiet and harmonious, colorful, * * *, with extensive lines and brush strokes, bold and surging. Art forms often present a strange image because of distortion, exaggeration and deformation.
Expressionism has made great achievements in drama creation. The plays of Swedish writer Strindberg became the pioneers of expressionist drama. Expressionist drama combines monologues with hallucinations, dreams with reality, forming a strange and peculiar artistic world. It breaks the boundary between time and space, abandons traditional drama programs, and puts nightmares, ghosts and dead souls on the stage through a series of grotesque descriptions. Therefore, it is often called "the unique call of the soul". Expressionist drama had a great influence on later absurd drama and Brecht.
Expressionism has also made great artistic achievements in the field of novel creation, resulting in Kafka, O 'Neill and other representative writers. Kafka believes that creation should show "what is hidden in my bone and can only be experienced in this bone." His brush strokes reach into the hearts of the little people struggling in the alienated environment, creating a precedent for writing little people and non-heroes in modernist novels. Kafka tells the confusion of the whole era. In his works, we can no longer see the beautiful and harmonious realm depicted by traditional literature, which is full of absurdity, distortion and nightmare, and has a strong appeal that shocks the world. O 'Neill's works also reveal the fear and destruction faced by people in a fragmented and unconfident era. He strongly demonstrated the tragic fate of modern people through allegorical expression.
Music expressionism emphasizes the expressive force of music. Music is the expression of subjective feelings, and opposing the reproduction consciousness and rational concept of traditional music can be regarded as the further development of romantic music in the19th century.