Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Expressionism |
ExpressionismNoun1. An art movement early in the 20th century; the artist's subjective expression of inner experiences was emphasized. 2. A genre of German painting that tried to show the subjective responses to scenes rather than the scenes themselves. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Expressionism is, generally speaking, a tendency in any art form (painting, literature, film,architecture and so on) to distort reality for emotional effect. Additionally, the term often implies emotional angst - the number of cheerful expressionist works is relatively small.
In this general sense, painters such as Mathias Grünewald and El Greco can be called expressionist, though in practice, the term is applied mainly to 20th century works.
Some of the movement's leading painters in the early 20th century were:
There were a number of Expressionist groups in painting, including the Blaue Reiter and Die Brücke. Later in the 20th century, the movement influenced a large number of other artists, including the so-called abstract expressionists.
- Wassily Kandinsky
- Oskar Kokoschka
- Franz Marc
- Edvard Munch
- Emil Nolde
- Egon Schiele
- Chaim Soutine
Expressionism is also found in other art forms - the novels of Franz Kafka are often described as expressionist, for example, and there was a concentrated Expressionist movement in early 20th century German theatre centred around Georg Kaiser and Ernst Toller. In music, Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg both wrote pieces described as expressionist (Schoenberg also made expressionist paintings).
In architecture, the work of Eric Mendelsohn comes under this category. An important building by him under this style is the Einstein Tower in Potsdam, Germany. There is an organic quality to buildings using this approach.
There was also an expressionist movement in film: see expressionism (film).
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Expressionism."
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Expressionism in filmmaking developed in Germany during the 1920s. During the period of recovery following World War I, the German film industry was booming, but because of the hard economic times filmmakers found it difficult to create movies that could compare with the lush, extravagant features coming from Hollywood. The filmmakers of the German UFA studio developed a method of compensating for the lack of high budgets, by using symbolism and mise-en-scène to insert mood and deeper meaning into a movie.The first Expressionist films, notably The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), The Golem (1920), and Nosferatu (1922) were highly symbolic and deliberately surrealistic portrayals of filmed stories. The dada movement was sweeping across the artistic world in the early 1920s, and the various European cultures of the time had embraced an ethic of change, and a willingness to look to the future by experimenting with bold, new ideas and artistic styles. The first Expressionist films made up for lavish budgets by using set designs with wildly non-realstic, geometrically absurd sets, along with designs painted on walls and floors to represent lights, shadows, and objects. The plots and stories of the Expressionist films often dealt with madness, insanity, betrayal, and other "intellectual" topics (as opposed to standard action-adventure and romantic films); the German name for this type of storytelling was called kammerspielfilm.
The extreme non-realism of Expressionism was a brief-lived fad, however, and it faded away (along with Dadaism) after only a few years. However, the themes of Expressionism were integrated into later films of the 1920s and 1930s, resulting in an artistic control over the placement of scenery, light, and shadow to enhance the mood of a film. This dark, moody school of filmmaking was brought to America when the Nazis gained power and a number of German filmmakers emigrated to Hollywood. They found a number of American movie studios willing to embrace them, and several of the German directors and cameramen flourished, producing a repertoire of Hollywood films that had a profound effect on the medium of film as a whole.
Two genres that were especially influenced by Expressionism were the horror film and film noir. Carl Laemmle and Universal Studios had made a name for themselves by producing such famous horror films of the silent era as Lon Chaney The Phantom of the Opera. German emigrees such as Karl Freund (the cinematographer for Dracula in 1931) set the style and mood of the Universal monster movies of the 1930s with their dark and artistically designed sets, providing the benchmark for later generations of horror films. Meanwhile, such directors as Fritz Lang and Michael Curtiz introduced the Expressionist style to the crime dramas of the 1940s, influencing a further line of filmmakers and taking Expressionism through the years.
- See also: German film history
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Expressionism (film)."
Crosswords: Expressionism |
| English words defined with "expressionism": de Kooning ♦ expressionist, expressionistic ♦ Jackson Pollock ♦ neoexpressionism ♦ Pollock ♦ supra expressionism ♦ Willem de Kooning. (references) |
| Non-English Usage: "Expressionism" is also a word in the following language with the English translation in parentheses. Swedish (expressionism). |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | Abstract expressionism is so mid-to-late eighties (Spaced; writing credit: Simon Pegg; Jessica Stevenson) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| ||||||||
| Speaker | Phrase(s) |
Karl Lagerfeld | Then I don't have to make an effort because I see my personal taste based on silent movies, German expressionism, and a little tougher, harsher thing. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| "Expressionism" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 93.51% of the time. "Expressionism" is used about 77 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 93.51% | 72 | 39,377 |
| Adjective (general or positive) | 3.9% | 3 | 202,518 |
| Noun (proper) | 2.6% | 2 | 245,945 |
| Total | 100.00% | 77 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expressions using "expressionism": abstract expressionism ♦ supra expressionism. Additional references. | |
| Hypenated Usage | |
Ending with "expressionism": Neo-expressionism. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "expressionism"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Albanian | ekspresionizëm. (various references) | |
Arabic | التعبيرية مذهب. (various references) | |
Bulgarian | експресионизъм. (various references) | |
Czech | expresionismus. (various references) | |
French | expressionnisme. (various references) | |
German | expressionismus. (various references) | |
Greek | εξπρεσιονισμόσ. (various references) | |
Hungarian | expresszionizmus. (various references) | |
Italian | espressionismo. (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | 表現主義 (representationalism). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | ひょうげんしゅぎ (representationalism). (various references) | |
Pig Latin | expressionismay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | expressionismo. (various references) | |
Romanian | expresionism. (various references) | |
Russian | экспрессионизм. (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | ekspresionizam. (various references) | |
Spanish | expresionismo. (various references) | |
Swedish | expressionism. (various references) | |
Turkish | ekspresyonizm, dışavurumculuk. (various references) | |
Ukrainian | експресіонізм. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "expressionism": expressionisms. (additional references) | |
| |
"Expressionism" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: expressinism, expressionsim. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "expressionism" (pronounced ikspre"shuni'zum) |
| 10 | -p r e" sh u n i' z u m | impressionism. |
| 7 | -sh u n i' z u m | abolitionism, obstructionism, perfectionism, protectionism, creationism, isolationism. |
| 6 | -u n i' z u m | agrarianism, anachronism, antagonism, authoritarianism, mechanism, microorganism, organism, paganism, parkinsonism, puritanism, chauvinism, communism, determinism, egalitarianism, expansionism, feminism, hedonism, hooliganism, humanism, illusionism, interventionism, lesbianism, republicanism, revisionism, satanism, sectarianism, tokenism, totalitarianism, unionism, vegetarianism. |
| 5 | -n i' z u m | modernism, monism, opportunism. |
| 4 | -i' z u m | absenteeism, absolutism, activism, adventurism, alcoholism, altruism, amateurism, aneurism, animism, aphorism, astigmatism, atavism, atheism, autism, baptism, barbarism, bilingualism, bolshevism, boosterism, botulism, mercantilism, mesmerism, metabolism, methodism, militarism, minimalism, monasticism, monetarism, monotheism, moralism, multiculturalism, multilateralism, mutualism, mysticism, narcissism, nationalism, nativism, naturalism, negativism, nepotism, neutralism, nihilism, optimism, ostracism, overoptimism, pacifism, parallelism, parochialism, pastoralism, paternalism, patriotism, pessimism, pharisaism, pietism, plagiarism, pluralism, polymorphism, polytheism, populism, positivism, pragmatism, professionalism, provincialism, racialism, racism, radicalism, realism, cannibalism, capitalism, catechism, centralism, classicism, collectivism, colonialism, commercialism, conservatism, consumerism, corporatism, counterterrorism, criticism, cronyism, cubism, cynicism, dandyism, defeatism, deism, despotism, diamagnetism, diastrophism, dimorphism, dogmatism, Druidism, dualism, dwarfism, dynamism, egoism, egotism, electromagnetism, elitism, embolism, emotionalism, empiricism, entrepreneurialism, environmentalism, ergotism, eroticism, escapism, ethnocentrism, euphemism, evangelism, extremism, factionalism, fanaticism, fascism, fatalism, favoritism, federalism, ferromagnetism, fetishism, feudalism, formalism, fundamentalism, futurism, geotropism, gnosticism, gradualism, helotism, heroism, hypnotism, idealism, imperialism, incrementalism, individualism, intellectualism, internationalism, Irredentism, isomorphism, jingoism, journalism, leftism, legalism, liberalism, lyricism, magnetism, mannerism, masochism, materialism, recidivism, relativism, rheumatism, romanticism, sadism, secularism, sensationalism, separatism, sexism, skepticism, socialism, statism, stoicism, supernaturalism, surrealism, symbolism, synergism, territorialism, terrorism, theism, tourism, truism, vandalism, vigilantism, voluntarism, volunteerism, voyeurism. |
| 3 | -z u m | bosom, microcosm, neoplasm, orgasm, phantasm, prism, careerism, chasm, cytoplasm, enthusiasm, iconoclasm, ism, sarcasm, schism, spasm. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "e-e-i-i-m-n-o-p-r-s-s-s-x" | |
-2 letters: expressions, impressions, permissions, reemissions. | |
-3 letters: expression, impression, mirinesses, missioners, permission, pixinesses, primnesses, reemission, remissions, riminesses, ropinesses. | |
-4 letters: emersions, emissions, expressos, impresses, imprisons, isoprenes, mispoises, missioner, premisses, primeness, promisees, prosiness, reimposes, remission, responses, spermines. | |
-5 letters: emersion, emission, emprises, enosises, episomes, erepsins, espresso, expiries, exposers, expresso, imposers, impreses, imprison, inspires, isoprene, isospins, miriness, miseries, mispoise, missense. | |
| Words containing the letters "e-e-i-i-m-n-o-p-r-s-s-s-x" | |
+1 letter: expressionisms. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
