German Memory Culture and Art

Catalog description

This course explores the colonial and fascist contexts in which the Brucke artists worked and lived, and examine the various contradictions inherent to the history of German Expressionism, e.g. Emil Nolde's proximity to the Nazi regime, Nolde's and Max Pechstein's connection to German colonialism and the specific forms and practices of appropriation in German primitivism. Looking back at exhibitions and press echoes from the 1955 Documenta to the controversial exhibitions "The Blind Spot" (2017) and "Whose Expression? Die Brücke und der Kolonialismus" (Brucke Museum 2021/22), the course examines the construction of German memory culture and its current deconstruction.