| Lancette Arts Journal Founded in 2000 |
Art Reviews |
March 2003 |
Käthe Kollwitz: the Art of Compassion, is on view at the AGO
until May 25, 2003
as are Ernst Arlach: A Spiritual Expressionism,
and Betty Goodwin: Imprints.]
Art has been burdened with the task to lift our spirits and take us out of ourselves. This stems from the naive assumption that all art should be beautiful, colorful, and life-confirming. Yet, many artists create to express their inner turmoil, without regard to what we might call beauty. They hope to communicate this turmoil to us so that we focus inward and are forced to examine our beliefs and values—whether we want to or not. Of all the artists who have lived within my lifetime, none has challenged us more in this direction than the German, Käthe Kollwitz, whose images are some of the most haunting created during the late 19th to mid-20th Centuries. An exhibition of 72 of her drawings, lithographs, woodcuts and small sculptures, now on display at the Art Gallery of Ontario, certainly throws down the gauntlet to make us think about our view of life and our convictions.
Kollwitz was not a painter. Color did not appeal to her. In her diary she expressed puzzlement over what drew artists, even her much admired favorite poet, Wolfgang von Goethe, to Italy and its colorful art. When she spoke of German painters, she expressed the view that on the whole they lacked a gift for color – an observation that is mostly correct.
Her own images are dark, both in subject matter and in the medium used to create them. They press down on the viewer, they demand inordinate attention, and require close examination. No one can call her work lovely, yet no one can deny that she has created great art; the kind of art that stands the test of time and so has become timeless.
The name Käthe Kollwitz has been known to me all my life. My mother owned two of her works, although what became of them I do not know. There were also two works by Dürer in my childhood home, whom, strangely enough, Kollwitz disliked for his close attention to form. The Dürers stayed with my mother until she died 10 years ago in New Westminster, BC. I can only guess that she disposed of the Kollwitz works because in the last years of the Second World War, Kollwitz's art—ironically—became associated with the policies of Nazi Germany. Some of her work had been turned into propaganda by a corrupt regime that had forbidden the artist to display her work, had stopped her from teaching at the Berlin Art Academy, and thereby silenced her voice. She could not protest against the misuse of her images of agony that often depict the suffering of innocent women and children, who become victims of violence.
There is another irony about her work. Her early style—over the years it evolved to showing only the essential elements of the human form— influenced Soviet Realism, an art form that stated the very opposite of what Kollwitz wanted to express. She had an exhibition in Moscow in 1927, at a time when few western artists got such a chance. Although she believed in socialism, she had no sympathies for communism. As early as 1920 she wrote in her diaries that she longed for a socialism that lets people live. "The communist regime ... cannot be the work of God." That is a strong condemnation.
Even today we must watch out that we do not use her for our own political ends. It is so very easy to look at her works and ascribe to them our own time, our own tumultuous circumstances. By using her work as a tool of . . .
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