ArtWay

Quality is the first norm for art, but its final norm is love and truth, the enriching of human life, the deepening of our vision.

Franz Marc: Fate of the Animals

ArtWay Visual Meditation 21 July 2024
 
 
Franz Marc: Fate of the Animals
 
 
The Spiritual Significance of Animals in Franz Marc’s Visual Art
 
by Kick Bras
 
This painting titled Fate of the Animals (Tierschicksale), also known as The Trees Showed Their Rings, the Animals Their Veins, from 1913 by the German painter Franz Marc, shows how man is destroying the habitat of animals in the wilderness. A paradisal animal world is disrupted by an apocalyptic disaster. The lack of horizontal and vertical lines makes the image very restless. The large diagonal lines of snapped and uprooted trees evoke an atmosphere of chaos and enormous threat. The panicked horses under a bleeding tree at the top left, boars seeking shelter at the bottom left, and the group of deer with stretched necks on the right make the fear tangible. The elongated neck of the animal that screams to heaven in agony does not leave us unmoved. It's not just a natural disaster at work here. It is also about a catastrophe caused by human beings. We see a sawn-off tree trunk on the left. Clearly, man has been at work here.
 
When Marc served at the front in 1915, he received a postcard of this work which was being exhibited in Berlin at the time. He wrote to his wife on March 17, 1915: "I was very upset and agitated. It seems like a prediction of this war, horrific and moving. I can hardly believe I painted this. On the blurry postcard the effect is so incredibly true that it is gruesome.”
 
The German painter Franz Marc lived from 1880-1916. During his high school years he considered studying theology. At that time he was very much under the influence of the Lutheran preacher Otto Schlier. But he chose to become an artist and started to focus more and more on painting animals. At the time he was stimulated by the animal painter Jean Bloe Niestle, who advised him to delve into the animal soul.
 
Marc was looking for a way of painting that gives expression to inner emotions and spiritual vision. He wrote: “There is a voice inside me that tells me again and again: back to nature, back to the simplest things. For it is only in this that there is the symbolism, pathos and mystery of nature.”
 
He wanted his work to become less naturalistic and more spiritual. To this end he began to make the forms more abstract and simpler. When he painted animals, he was no longer concerned with an exact representation of the animal. He rather wanted to penetrate to the essence of the animal, to the beating and pounding life in the animal. He wanted to evoke the mystery of life that he discerned in animals. For example, around 1912 he wrote:
 
There is no true art without religion. Science and technology cannot replace this. New symbols will emerge to connect God and art. Art will free itself from people's wishes and plans. We will no longer paint the forest and the horse as we like them, but as they really are, as the forest and the horse feel themselves, their deepest being, which lies behind the outward appearance.
 
According to Marc you can see the trembling of life, the beating of the blood, in animals. You see how the same mystery of life of which man is part, also lives in animals and plants. We need to empathize with the way in which life in animals manifests itself.
 
From 1908 he spent three years painting compositions with horses. He shaped the landscape more and more in accordance with the rhythm formed by the different horses’ bodies, so that a symbiosis was created. Colours also started to play a role in this. The use of complementary colours was supposed to bring balance to the painting. Together with Kandinsky (among others) he published an almanac under the title Der blaue Reiter and founded a new group of artists with the same name. According to Marc the new art they wanted to make did have a tradition behind it, for example in the mystical work of El Greco. He is aiming at a mystical-inner construction of the world. His group’s goal is to “create symbols of their time with work that belongs on the altar of the future spiritual religion.”
 
Together with the artists’ group die Brücke, the group of der Blaue Reiter became a high-profile and influential movement of German expressionism. This movement wanted to break with the old order of the German Empire with its hypocritical morality, its penchant for ostentation, its extreme capitalism and materialism, and its art of nationalistic glorification. The art that the expressionists wanted to make had to be pure, intuitive, vitalistic, not naturalistic but spiritual and idealistic. Unfortunately, he was not given much time. At the outbreak of the First World War, he was drafted into the army and was killed at the front in France on 4 March 1916.
 
*******
 
Franz Marc: Fate of the Animals (Tierschicksale), 1913, oil on canvas, 264 x 195 cm. Basel, Kunstmuseum.
 
Franz Marc (1880-1916) was born in Munich, Germany. The son of a landscape painter, he decided to become an artist after a year of military service interrupted his plans to study philology. He also seriously considered studying theology. From 1900 to 1902 he studied at the Kunstakademie in Munich with Gabriel Hackl and Wilhelm von Diez. The following year, during a visit to France, he was introduced to Japanese woodcuts and the work of the Impressionists in Paris. Marc suffered from severe depression from 1904 to 1907. In 1907 he went again to Paris, where he responded enthusiastically to the work of Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, the Cubists, and the Expressionists. In 1910 Marc’s first solo show was held at Kunsthandlung Brackl, Munich; and he met August Macke and the collector Bernhard Koehler. He publicly defended the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (NKVM) and was formally welcomed into the group early in 1911, when he met Vasily Kandinsky. After internal dissension split the NKVM, he and Kandinsky formed Der Blaue Reiter, whose first exhibition took place in December 1911 in Munich. Marc invited members of the Berlin Brücke group to participate in the second Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) show two months later. Der Blaue Reiter Almanac was published with lead articles by Marc in 1912. When World War I broke out in August 1914 Marc immediately enlisted. He died on March 4, 1916, in Braquis, near Verdun-sur-Meuse, France.
 
Kick Bras (1949) is a theologian who publishes on spirituality, mysticism, and meditation. As a researcher, he is affiliated with the Titus Brandsma Institute in Nijmegen, a scientific research institute for the study of spirituality in the light of the Jewish and Christian tradition. Previously, he taught spirituality at the (Protestant) Theological University of Kampen. He published four books in Dutch about mysticism, and spirituality and art. See more: http://www.kickbras.nl.
 
*******
 
ARTS NEWS INTERNATIONAL
 
VESSEL: AN ART TRAIL IN REMOTE RURAL CHURCHES
8 August – 31 October 2024 | Black Mountains, UK
Vessel is a curated art trail in remote rural churches near the Black Mountains between Usk and Hay-on-Wye. Seven artworks by seven artists will be shown in seven churches, six of which are maintained by the Friends of Friendless Churches who keep them open all year round. The theme of ‘vessel’ references bodies, boats, secretions and receptacles; each of the artworks will be sited in a particular relationship to the church and its material culture.
 
'HINTS AND REVELATIONS': RADIUS FESTIVAL OF FAITH AND DRAMA 2024
Saturday 12th October 2024 | Cambridge, UK
The day includes a directing master class with two professional actors exploring the religious themes of Shakespeare's The Tempest.  Also a dramatization of John Betjeman’s poetry, A Hint of the Unknown God by Rex Walford, who was a writer and actor in Cambridge. These poems explore Betjeman's fascination with matters religious, both with the human spirit – its hopes, fears and solaces – and with the Church as an institution. Lunch is also provided.
 
EXHIBITION: SAILING TO BYZANTIUM
29 June – 13 August 2024 | Brisbane, Australia
Sailing to Byzantium blends the sacred art of the Early Renaissance and Byzantine periods with themes from William Butler Yeats' poem. Hosted at historic St John's Anglican Cathedral in Brisbane, this collection of recent paintings and sketches invites you on a journey through faith, history, and artistic expression. The opening night (11 July) will feature classical music performances by Amalia Safonov (vocalist and flautist) and Artemii Safonov (pianist and composer).
Learn More
 
KESWICK UNCONVENTIONAL
27th July - 2nd August 2024 | Keswick, UK
The third week of the Keswick Convention, ‘Keswick Unconventional’, focuses on the arts week and ACG members Stewart Henderson and Kaori Homma will be contributing. Stewart and his wife Carol, along with Yvonne Lyon will be giving a music and spoken word performance as part of a series of lunchtime concerts. Kaori Homma and Alastair Gordon will be leading an art workshop on Thursday 1st August.
More Info
 
ART & CHRISTIANITY ANNUAL RETREAT
13th - 15th September 2024 | Abergavenny, Wales
A&C’s annual retreat will be set in the beautiful area of the Black Mountains around Monmouthshire and Herefordshire. The weekend will comprise of walks, talks and an art trail curated by Jacquiline Creswell exploring the theme of ’Vessel’. The Rev Cannon Jarel Robinson-Brown will be giving a lecture entitled ‘Living Stones: Buildings, Bodies and Spirit’.
 
THREE THINGS NEWSLETTER
Three Things’ most recent newsletter, curated by former L’Abri workers Phillip Johnston and Andy Patton, considers the questions of what redemptive AI might look like.
CHICAGO SACRED MUSIC CONCERT & CONFERENCE
3 August 2024 | Chicago, USA
Early in the history of the Church, Augustine and Boethius provided us a framework by which to discern the objective reality of beauty. How can we understand and discern Beauty via this framework, and how has the Catholic sacred music tradition pursued this "Musica Universalis" since its inception? A presentation titled "The Golden Tapestry: Spiritual Orientation of the Catholic Sacred Music Tradition" at St. John Cantius Parish Hall presented by Composer Dr. Mark Nowakowski and Richard Childress will address this question.