Wieber, Sabine

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      Wieber, S. (2015) Morton, Masha. Max Klinger and Wilhelmine Culture: On the Treshold of German Modernism. German Quarterly, 88(4), pp. 549-551.     There may be differences between this version and the published version. You are advised to consult the publisher’s version if you wish to cite from it.  This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Wieber, S. (2015) Morton, Masha. Max Klinger and Wilhelmine Culture: On the Treshold of German Modernism. German Quarterly, 88(4), pp. 549-551, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gequ.10249. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.     http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/128111/            Deposited on: 28 September 2016                       Enlighten – Research publications by members of the University of Glasgow http://eprints.gla.ac.uk Morton, Marsha. Max Klinter and Wilhelmine Culture. On the Threshold of German Modernism. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. 434 pp. £80.00 (hardcover).  Max Klinger’s (1857-1920) life-size, polychrome marble sculpture of Ludwig van Beethoven formed the centrepiece of the 14th Vienna Secession Exhibition in 1902. In many ways, the exhibition was as much a celebration of the Leipzig artist as of the German composer. By this point in time, Klinger had reached the zenith of his international fame as a modern artist and yet, his art historical position started to become increasingly precarious - especially after his death in 1920. Although his drawings and print cycles continued to enter private and public collections (especially in the United States), Klinger’s idiosyncratic realism – especially in his paintings - posed an insurmountable challenge to post-war formalism and abstraction. Klinger was virtually forgotten until the 1960s and 1970s, when a series of exhibitions and publications gradually generated renewed interest. Since then, Klinger slowly made his way back into the ‘story of modern art’ but most of the scholarship continues to be offered in German. Marsha Morton’s 2014 publication under review here changes this dissatisfactory situation and makes a significant intervention not only in the Klinger scholarship but also in the study of late nineteenth-century German art and culture.  Morton’s book is so multi-facetted that this short review cannot do it justice. But her key thesis is constructed around Klinger’s evocative visual engagement with the disquieting psychological undercurrents of modern urban life. This analytical emphasis on the psychological rather than an exclusively formalist modernism is part of a broader shift in the literature (e.g. D. Silvermann, A. Dombrowski). Morton argues that Klinger’s prints and drawings produced during the 1870s and 1880s manifested a decisive shift in German art from academic convention to innovation during a period of socio-political transition and cultural flux in the Wilhelmine Empire (1871-1918). Although Morton cautions her reader to not posit Klinger as a direct predecessor of German Expressionism, she urge us to recalibrate our more conventional understanding of German modernism, which always begins with the formation of Die Brücke (1905) and Der Blaue Reiter (1911). According to Morton, Klinger laid the foundation for an alternative modernism that did not embrace abstraction (arguably initiated by Charles Baudelaire’s 1868 call for a ‘pure art’), but instead activated a mode of representation that remained anchored in the phenomenological world and projected psychologically charged states of mind as well as metaphysical ideas. Klinger clearly articulated this aesthetic position in his treatise Painting and Drawing (1891) where he argued that drawing conveyed ideas rather than external appearances. This might tempt us to place him into a Symbolist camp, but, as Morton rightly points out, his relationship with Symbolism was problematic and rife with tensions. It is a well-known fact that Klinger’s print portfolios and drawings explore a wide spectrum of human behaviour – from ill-fated love affairs and sex to violence and death. Morton carefully revisits Klimt’s early oeuvre and posits the visual in relation to Klinger’s own writings as well as his extensive contemporary reception. This ultimately enables her to argue that Klinger deserves a place amongst the elite circles of Europe’s progressive artists of his day. Morton’s compelling interpretation links her to a dynamic group of scholars who, over the past three decades, have begun to dismantle a monolithic (Greenbergian) Modernism in favour of heterogeneous modernism(s) with distinctive visual languages but shared ideals and ideologies (e.g. P. Berman, J. Clarke, M. Facos, F. Forster-Hahn, B. Irwin Lewis, M. Makela). Morton’s revisionism, however, does not simply put Klinger back into German modernism, but questions – and maybe even disassembles - the very institutional practices and disciplinary paradigms that created a modernist canon in the first place.  Morton offers an excellent reading of the Wilhelmine Empire’s early socio-political and cultural landscapes that is relevant to scholars across disciplines. She closes interrogates Klinger’s emerging reputation during the 1870s and 1880s as a ‘modern spirit’ who responded to conflicting concerns of his time. Morton clearly states that she is not interested in a ‘comprehensive monographic survey of his prints’ but wants to focus instead on ways in which Klinger’s art was ‘interpreted within the context of what people in Wilhelmine Germany were thinking, reading, discussing and worrying about’ (2). Her interest in Klinger’s popular reception explains Morton’s exclusive focus on his prints and drawings. As the Gründerzeit was deeply fraught with social, political and cultural tensions and uncertainties, Morton’s approach offers an entirely convincing reading of Klinger’s modernism as a ‘subversive challenge to the identity and values … of the Wilhelmine bourgeoisie’ (3). To achieve this interpretative goal, Morton employs a truly cross-disciplinary approach that reinforces the great analytical and intellectual potential of an archival-based reception history. The book is thematically organised and each chapter functions as a ‘case study’ that explores Klinger’s engagement with specific themes, individuals or texts. As a result of this approach, Morton is more or less able to address Klinger’s print cycles in a chronological order.  The book’s complicated structure is held together by Morton’s disciplined focus on Klinger’s own motivations, his critical reception, and larger discourse operating in the young Wilhelmine Empire. In Chapter 3, for example, Morton explores Klinger’s print cycles Intermezzo I and II  (1881) in relation to Klinger’s timely discovery of Darwin (1875). But she places Klinger’s interest in Darwinism within a context of Germany’s late nineteenth-century fascination with natural history and popular scientific discourse as it was disseminated through exhibitions, aquariums, zoos, menageries and the popular press. Morton employs the same methodology in Chapters 4 and 5, which introduce other drawings and print cycles (e.g. his illustrations for a deluxe edition of Apuleius’ Armor and Psyche published in 1880) to unveil Klinger’s engagement with non-Western cultures and ancient mythology respectively. Klinger’s aesthetic journey is once again located within larger knowledge structures emerging in Wilhlemine Germany such as ethnography (tied in the German colonial project), anthropology, and what we now might label comparative cultural history. Morton sustains this cross-disciplinarity throughout her book’s seven chapters. After anchoring Klinger’s aesthetic pursuit in German Romanticism and literary traditions of the grotesque (Chapters 1 and 2), she then rounds her book off by presenting an exceptionally convincing, critical dialogue between Klinger’s work and nineteenth-century psychology (Chapter 6) as well as urban experience, social dissent and criminology (Chapter 7).  The research and critical analysis presented in Morton’s book attests to the author’s sustained intellectual engagement with Max Klinger and Wilhelmine Germany. This way of working seems to come under increasing pressure and it has been a pleasure to review a book that upholds such high academic standards. The book has been beautifully produced by Ashgate Press and includes 141 high-quality black and white illustrations (ideally suited for the reproduction of prints and drawings). The Introduction’s comprehensive literature review and historiography of Klinger’s conflicted reception since the artist’s death in 1920 as well as the book’s clearly structured and impressive bibliography further underlines Morton’s scientific integrity and her commitment to modern German art and culture. But this publication is so much more than Klinger’s first comprehensive study in English. Morton’s book represents a new Standardwerk on Klinger and a must-read for any scholar interested in the Wilhelmine Empire’s fascinating and often fractured cultural history. The only every so slight reservation I have is that Morton’s writing can be rather challenging because she tries to convey so much information. But in light of Morton’s wide scope of analysis and the intellectual depth of her argument, this should not come as a surprise nor should it present a serious hindrance to the enjoyment of such an elegant and scholarly publication. Ultimately, I hope that Max Klinger and Wilhelmine Germany will pave the way for a long-overdue critical engagement with Klinger’s more problematic paintings and sculptures, which might actually disrupt Morton’s convincing narrative of Klinger’s alternative modernism  SABINE WIEBER University of Glasgow 1285 words 

Morton, Masha. Max Klinger and Wilhelmine Culture: On the Treshold of German Modernism

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Morton, Masha. Max Klinger and Wilhelmine Culture: On the Treshold of German Modernism

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