Description
In 1913, Franz Marc, one of the key figures of German Expressionism, created a masterpiece: The Fate of the Animals. With its violent slashes of color and line, the painting seemed to pre-figure both the outbreak of World War I and, more eerily, Marc's own death in an artillery barrage at the Battle of Verdun three years later.
With his signature blend of wide-ranging erudition and lively, accessible prose, Morgan Meis explores Marc's painting in depth, guided in part by a series of letters Marc wrote to his wife Maria while he was a soldier in the war. In those letters, Marc explores the nature of art, the fate of European civilization, and the inner spiritual nature of all life.
Along the way, Meis brings in other artists such as D.H. Lawrence, Edgar Degas, and Paul Klee to flesh out his argument. The Fate of the Animals also explores the darker undercurrents of German apocalyptic thinking in Marc's time, especially Norse mythology and the ancient Vedic texts as they influenced Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Heidegger.
The Fate of the Animals is the second volume of Meis's Three Paintings Trilogy, the first volume of which, The Drunken Silenus, examined a painting by Rubens. The third volume (forthcoming) will consider a painting by Joan Mitchell.
Author: Morgan Meis
Publisher: Slant Books
Published: 09/15/2022
Pages: 200
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.76lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.00w x 0.63d
ISBN13: 9781639821211
ISBN10: 163982121X
BISAC Categories:
- Art | History | Modern (Late 19th Century to 1945)
- Art | Individual Artists | Monographs
- Art | Subjects & Themes | Plants & Animals