FRANKFURT, GERMANY.- The urbanist system of reference which links the metropolis of French Impressionism with the metropolis of German Expressionism, serves as the pivot of the exhibition in the Schirn curated by Karin Sagner, Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani, and Matthias Ulrich. The show pursues the urban traces from Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s (1809–1891) sustained interventions in Paris to the comprehensive redevelopment of Berlin under James Hobrecht (1825–1902) and highlights their impact on the fine arts. The comparison between Paris and Berlin reveals how the fascination and curiosity characteristic of the way Impressionist painters like Claude Monet or Camille Pissarro recorded the urban citizens’ anonymity and, doing so, transferred the genre of landscape painting into the urban sphere, gave way to a horror of society in early 20th-century German Expressionism where the city – especially in works by George Grosz or Ludwig Meidner – presented itself as almost perverted and transformed into a living creature, a wild beast of prey. Comprising nearly 300 paintings, photographs, city maps, graphic works, posters, and films, the four chapters of the exhibition – “Boulevard and Street,” “Urban Mise-en-Scènes,” “Mobility and Technology,” “Commercialism, Spectacle, Turmoil” – unfold a vast panorama of social, mainly bourgeois life in the two metropolises.

The exhibition “The Conquest of the Street. From Monet to Grosz” is sponsored by Friends of the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt e. V. and Fraport AG.

Max Hollein, Director of the Schirn: “In conjunction with the exhibitions ‘A View for the People. Art for All’ and ‘Pierre Bourdieu: The Algerian War and Photography’ presented concurrently in the Haus der Kunst in Munich and in the Deichtorhallen Hamburg respectively, ‘The Conquest of the Street. From Monet to Grosz’ constitutes a common project that – under the title ‘Art and Democracy’ – centers on the emergence of modern society. Styles such as French Impressionism and German Expressionism not only revealingly analyzed life in the new cities but also made it come alive visually. Based on a great variety of significant works, the exhibition reflects the individual’s difficult position within the new urban structures.”

The population of most European cities grew spectacularly until the end of the 19th century. Technology and industry increasingly replaced agriculture and the craft guilds. And while the outskirts saw the construction of factories and the creation of living space for workers, technological progress manifested itself in the form of multistoried houses, wide streets, illuminated shop windows, and roofed-over shopping arcades. Prosperity and consumption spread and molded the modern citizen. Originally planned as road axes, the boulevards attracted huge crowds. Similarly, electric lighting, urban means of transport, and other modern achievements decisively informed the modern cityscape. Simultaneously, a colorful panorama of entertainment culture with its cafés, kiosks, circuses, and cabarets developed, and its poster advertising began to blur the boundaries between sublime art and popular illustration.

Paris, the “metropolis of the 19th century,” was the first modern city which gave birth to an urban myth all by itself and where – a model for other European metropolises – the new modern urban consciousness found its genuine form of representation. The comprehensive and radical urban measures taken by Baron Haussmann in the years from 1852 to 1870 were crucial. His plans included the opening of wide boulevards and avenues by breaking through narrow, winded, and densely built-up blocks and thus created a new system of circulation besides the narrow old road network – a system the arteries of which converged in radial squares. The street represented the closest functional connection between the space available to traffic, zones to linger, and built-up areas. The concept of “Haussmannization” also comprised comparatively uniform façades and public green spaces. Extensive demolition in the old quarters of the city, which banished the petit bourgeois population to the suburbs, was dictated by economic interests: coupled with notions of social reform, basic aspects of hygiene, and regulatory interventions on the part of the state that fought against the revolutionary Parisian workers, and the construction of representative public buildings.

The dynamics of the urban reorganization of Berlin in the second half of the 19th century was completely different from that of Paris since here – regarding the issue from a country/city perspective – the old center presented less of a hindrance to the modern metropolis. Systematic development measures were already carried out in the bourgeois quarters of the rapidly growing suburbs (Friedrich-Wilhelm-Stadt, Friedrichvorstadt, Wilmersdorf and around Hohenzollerndamm) in the fifties and sixties and especially during the construction boom in the latter part of the century from 1871 on. The results were less conspicuous than the multistoried tenement buildings in the new working-class areas in the north, northeast, and southeast. It was James Hobrecht who played a crucial role in the urban reorganization of Berlin: he worked out a development plan for its surroundings from 1859 to 1862 that was based on earlier suggestions concerning parts of the area by Lenné and others. Profit-orientation resulted in a dense development of often narrow plots with houses at the back and at the sides as well as massive overcrowding so that disastrous social circumstances soon prevailed. Without having aimed at it, Hobrecht’s development plan thus contributed to transforming Berlin into the biggest tenement building city in the world.

While the urban measures and their consequences were seen negatively in Germany to an increasing extent, the attitude in France was primarily positive in spite of many reservations. This different views are also reflected in the Impressionists’ and Expressionists’ works. Urban life and urban space came to be seen as experiences of the modern as such, and the city as a subject became associated with modern painting, the aesthetical concept of modernity. Thus, fascinated by the new Paris metropolis, Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro dedicated a number of paintings to cityscapes. Offering a medium to realize their studies in light, atmosphere, and movement, vibrating street life remained the Impressionists’ favorite subject throughout many years. The city views by Albert Birkle, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Ludwig Meidner, and George Grosz have to be seen against the background of the extreme social contrasts and the housing misery of Berlin, the fastest growing city of Europe around 1900, and the negative emotions resulting from them. Meidner, who published his “Anleitung zum Malen von Großstadtbildern” (‘Instructions for Painting Cityscapes’) in 1914, regarded the metropolitan outskirts as doomsday scenarios – settings the outbreak of World War I provided with a real political backdrop. In his rhythmically populated street scenes and compositions determined by colored areas, Kirchner developed psychograms of metropolitan life. Also drawing on specific Berlin living situations, George Grosz fathomed the breaking apart of urban civilization in architectural set pieces.