Centennial Celebration Exhibit

The idea to produce an exhibition to commemorate the centennial anniversary of Harvard’s Busch-Reisinger Museum began with the acquisition of an artistic gem.

On one of the museum’s walls hangs Franz von Stuck’s Wounded Amazon, a painting of a fictional battle between Amazons and centaurs. Scholars have speculated that the injured Amazon in the center of the painting, which von Stuck had previously used to symbolize the ‘new’ art he was creating, represents the opposition faced by modern art at the turn of the 20th century.

The painting, a gift to the Busch-Reisinger in honor of its 100th birthday, captures the essence of an oft-missed period that preceded German Expressionism and threatened the stability of academic art, generating a rich array of conflicting styles.

“Before Expressionism: Art in Germany circa 1903,” which opened Oct. 24, aims to display those emergent styles—primarily naturalism, symbolism and the grotesque—with artworks drawn mostly from Harvard’s own collections. The comprehensive study of the period was organized by Adrian Sudhalter, the Werner and Maren Otto curatorial intern (2002-2004).

“It’s been an incredible experience for me working with [museum curator] Peter Nisbet, who had faith that I would be able to do this exhibition, as well as working with other curators who helped me look through their museum’s collections,” Sudhalter says.

With its inclusion of the Busch’s first original art work—Arthur Kampf’s portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm II, one of five paintings among an array of prints and drawings—the exhibition reminds audiences of the museum’s conservative origin.

In Kampf’s portrait, the traditional figure of the Kaiser stands erect with a hint of a sneer, clashing with Lovis Corinth’s adjacent Salomé, which epitomizes the unconventional. Largely a satirical depiction of femmes fatales, the wanton Salomé leans over John the Baptist’s head with her breasts exposed, her fingers probing at the eyes of the dead. Informed more by the burlesque than the Biblical, Corinth uses the grotesque to satirize a common subject in paintings at the time.

One of the most famous artists in the exhibition, Paul Klee, also uses the grotesque to mock bourgeois society in his etchings, likening his subjects to animals through the form and tone of the lines. Among the exhibition’s greatest strengths is its juxtaposition of early works by renowned artists with their later works, showing the course of their development. This is true of Klee’s etchings, which differ vastly from his subsequent joyful, childlike stick figures in both technique and subject.

Similarly, Emil Nolde’s eight postcards of a caricatured Alpine landscape (100,000 copies of which were sold in ten days) depart from his later works depicting nature with a forceful Romanticism.

In Paula Modersohn-Becker’s etching Blind Woman in the Woods (Woman Playing the Piano), an elderly woman is trapped in a maze inhabited only by mushrooms and bare-branched trees. Feeling her way through the somber dark, she inadvertently makes a piano out of nature, her fingers pressing silent keys into the forest’s air. Yet her attempts seem futile, likening the work to other etchings which portray common folk with sad overtones.

Max Klinger’s etchings are another highlight. His four prints from On Death, Part One examine death’s randomness, hauntingly capturing episodes of sudden death with terrific contrast between line and tone through etching and aquatint techniques. His two prints from Brahms Fantasies resemble surreal collages of these techniques, with eerie open-mouthed faces stuck onto harps and a powerful background of turbulent waves and sky converging to reflect the chaotic power of the composer’s music.

The only artist to be exhibited in three different media is Franz von Stuck, whose noteworthy contributions in printmaking and painting methods are supplemented with the exhibit’s only sculpture. Titled Amazon, its smooth, dark silhouette outlines a muscular woman atop a wide-eyed horse’s back, her left hand gripping the horse’s mane while her other hand is positioned to fling a pointy spear. The moment is one of everlasting tension, freezing the Amazon’s attack at the brink of its culmination.

A superb collection of 10 other artworks given to the Busch in honor of the anniversary (which do not pertain to the period in question) is dispersed throughout the adjacent permanent galleries.