Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Adolph Menzel 1815-1905

Adolph Menzel
Study of a Prussian officer, half-length, from the rear
1860
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Adolph Menzel
Studies of a dancer
ca. 1870-80
drawing
British Museum

Adolph Menzel
Studies of a young woman
1870s
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Adolph Menzel
Sleeping youth, his head and arm resting on the back of a sofa
before ca. 1875-90
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Adolph Menzel (or Adolph von Menzel, as he became when ennobled by the Kaiser for the sake of his art in 1898, toward the end of a long life) was indisputably the most widely-esteemed German artist of the 19th century.  "More than 10,000 of his drawings survive.  The trailblazer of German Realist painting, Menzel aimed to create images that were more true-to-life and precise than photographs.  His height  four feet, seven inches  destined him to be an outsider.  One of Edgar Degas's friends remembered Menzel at a ball: a small man with glasses, speaking little, drinking champagne, and sketching."  In posthumous fame, Menzel's only rival among his German peers has proved to be Caspar David Friedrich, an artist who came strongly into fashion worldwide during the second half of the 20th century.  But during their own newly-modern century itself  when both artists were alive  Menzel was a household name, while Friedrich remained all but unknown.

Adolph Menzel
Woman in court dress
ca. 1875-90
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Adolph Menzel
Study of a woman
ca. 1875-90
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Adolph Menzel
Study of a man in a hat, from behind
1880
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Adolph Menzel
Head of a bearded man
1884
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Adolph Menzel
Heads of two old men 
and a right hand holding a hat
1887
drawing
Princeton University Art, Museum

THE TRAIN STATION (II)

One of the cleverest and most technological advances brought forth by the modern age is, in my opinion, the train station.  Daily, hourly, trains rush either into or out of it, bearing persons of all ages and characters and of every profession off into the distance or else whisking them back home.  What a life pageant is offered by this entity I am reporting on here with pleasure, though also without describing it too exhaustively, as I am not an expert.  I hope I am justified in observing it instead from a more general, accessible angle.  The very picture the station presents, with all its coming and going, can be described as highly agreeable, and to this must be added all the particularly refreshing and delightful sounds  the shouts, people talking, the rolling of wheels, and the reverberations of hurrying footsteps.  Here a little lady is selling newspapers, and over there packages and small valises are being checked at the baggage counter for such and such a length of time.  Amid the graceful clinking of useful money, train tickets are being requested and dispensed.  A person about to set off on a journey quickly partakes of a sausage or plate of soup in the restaurant to fortify himself.  In the spacious waiting rooms, male and female possessors of wanderlust cool their heels, some with a pleasure-filled jaunt before them, others pursuing serious business objectives and mercantile or commercial plans aimed at preserving their subsistence.  Books are on display and for sale at a kiosk, including merely entertaining or suspenseful volumes and high-quality reading material.  You need only reach out your hand for culture and pay the specified price.  Elsewhere you encounter fruits such as apples, pears, cherries and bananas.  Posters inform you of the interesting sights to be seen all over the world, for example an ancient city, quays bearing palace hotels, a mountain peak, an imposing cathedral, or a palm-studded landscape with pyramids.  All manner of things both known and unknown are parading by.  I myself am sometimes well-known, sometimes a stranger.  Often entire associations go marching respect-inducingly into the main hall, a space that exemplifies the Machine Age and embodies something international.  It's almost romantic to think that in all these countries, be it in the sunlit daytime or at night, trains are indefatigably crossing back and forth.  What a far-reaching network of civilization and culture this implies.  Organizations that have been created and institutions that have been called into existence cannot simply be shrugged off.  Everything I achieve and accomplish brings with it obligations.  My activity is superior to me.  

It's lovely when a parting takes place at a train station or else a reunion transpires and occurs. 

– by Robert Walser, from the collection called Microscripts, originally composed in German during the 1920s, but unpublished until 1978  translated by Susan Bernofsky and first published in English by New Directions in 2010.  I quote this passage in particular for the way Walser gradually 'runs off the rails'  as the paragraph ends (and the form itself becomes a special sort of self-canceling metaphor).

Adolph Menzel
Studies of a man drinking from a cup
1888
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Adolph Menzel
Study of a woman in profile
1890
drawing
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut

Adolph Menzel
Woman in a crushed velvet hat
1894
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Adolph Menzel
Three studies of women
1899
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Adolph Menzel
Portrait of a woman
drawing
1902
British Museum

Adolph Menzel
Two studies of gripping right hands
1884
drawing
Los Angeles County Museum of Art