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A unique approach to still life painting, an animation of the inanimate, developed in the works of German expressionist artists during the period between 1910 and 1914. This essay considers how this approach relates to issues raised by Georg Simmel and Alois Riegl about social experience and art within the modern world. The works of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, it is argued, can be seen to exemplify this approach, but also to differ from it in the way their design and use of textiles, incorporation of cubist concerns about space, and references to bohemian sociability involve the artist’s lived experience of the studio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neo Rauch is an important artist on the international art scene, known in particular for large, dream-inspired paintings of alienated figures in eerie landscapes. These works combine recognisable imagery with flat areas of colour, hovering in the liminal space between figuration and abstraction. Critics frequently describe these works as ‘Kafkaesque’ and ‘nightmarish’. They also often point to visual references made to Socialist Realism, Dada, Pop, or comic books and print advertising of the 1950s. Close analyses of Rauch’s paintings, however, are surprisingly rare, especially in Anglo-American scholarship, which prefers to see them as having no meaning. This lack of interpretation may be due in part to the dearth of knowledge about his life and art before the fall of the Berlin Wall. This article focuses on Rauch’s art and reception before 1989/1990 in order to better understand a number of paintings he created in the late 1990s, and will argue that these more recent paintings reflect upon this past and, more specifically, upon the challenges that East German artists faced in the new Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the art of German painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer. It is noted that Kiefer's art is his vehicle for coming to terms with Germany's Nazi past. Kiefer's search for Germany's hidden past has resulted in a series of paintings of the Parsifal legend. He chose the attic as a means to engage and confront the traumatic memories of the Nazi past. His painting "Parsifal" depicts the final scene of German composer Richard Wagner's music drama.