Panama Girls

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner is one of the key artists of German Expressionism. He is renowned for his depictions of urban scenes, as well as the non-representative aspects of German Expressionism. One good example of his work is Panama Girls, which he painted in 1911. In Panama Girls, Kirchner is exploring the enlivening but destructive nature of Western society, which is one of the central tenets of his work. He uses the dancing girls as a subject to discuss this idea. In this painting, Kirchner portrays a dancing troupe called the Panama Girls, who are led by a women named Aida Overton Walker. We know this is the group in the work both from the title, which suggests the name of the troupe, and their dance. The Panama Girls were famous for doing …show more content…

The depiction of African American women makes it tempting to suggest that the primary issues Kirchner is confronting in the work are ones of racism, but this is likely not the case. Racism was part of the reality in Germany, and certainly something Kirchner was aware of.2 However, Kirchner was not concerned with elements of racism. He was more focused on ideas of primitivism and African art. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries a phenomenon called the ethnographic museum become popular. These museums displayed “primitive” art from faraway lands such as Polynesia and Africa, often from colonial territories. Dresden, where Kirchner lived, had a particularly popular museum. In it, he “discovered” primitive art.3 Kirchner and his contemporaries were drawn to this primitive art because it “displayed exactly the same formal language as [their] own.” “Kirchner was attracted to the assumed spontaneous and uninhibited efforts of the natives.”4 He is so attracted to this primitive style because it reflects his thematic goal of analyzing the destructive elements of society. Kirchner was part of a group called Die Brücke, which in English translates to The Bridge. The meaning of the name is somewhat self-explanatory, in that the group hopes to be a bridge between the past and the future of art. To quote the group’s manifesto “We carry the future and want to create for ourselves freedom of life and of movement against the long-established older forces.”5 Kirchner and others felt very restrained by the old guard, both an artistic and societal sense. Using the Panama Girls gives Kirchner a platform to discuss these ideas of freedom. He is both rejecting representational traditions, and commenting on societal tendencies. By employing the formal elements he does, Kirchner is exposing his underlying fears about society. He paints the dancing women almost like aliens. Their forms are

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