Caricature of the art practice at the Hohen Karlsschule
|
| Caricature of the art practice at the Hohen Karlsschule |
|---|
| Joseph Anton Koch , 1791 |
| partly watercolored drawing |
| 35 x 50.1 cm |
| State Gallery Stuttgart , Graphic Collection |
The caricature of the art practice at the Hohen Karlsschule is a work by the artist Joseph Anton Koch from 1791.
background
Joseph Anton Koch was accepted as a painting student at the Hohen Karlsschule in 1785 . He did not accept the tutelage of the teaching staff in silence. In 1791 he defended himself with a caricature after the director Christoph Dionysius Seeger had improperly punished him. Seeger had received from Duke Carl Eugen the authority to impose disciplinary punishments on the students, but in this case had exceeded the limits within which the punishments had to move according to the Duke's specifications: Adult students should not be corporally punished, Seeger but Koch had evidently struck. Therefore he did not intervene as Koch's caricaturethat incriminated him was in circulation in the Hohen Karlsschule, and the paper was preserved.
A few months after creating the caricature, Koch fled the High Charles School. His friend Johann Baptist Seele , whose sympathy with the French Revolution was feared, was dismissed in 1792.
description
In the center of the picture and the action is a student who has just had an argument with the headmaster Seeger. With a defiant look and clenched fists, the young man, who wears civilian clothes in the style of the French revolutionary fashion instead of a uniform and stands in front of a large easel, on which a couple can be seen, looks to the right over the head of the director Seeger . He tramples grimly with bent knees through a jumble of pallets , brushes and other painting utensils on the floor, has his right hand clenched into a fist and strikes with a long stick in his left. Apparently the student refused to deliver the decorative painting requested, and this upset Seeger. On the other side of the insubordinate Eleven, i.e. on the left side of the picture, in the foreground is a large dog with one end of a canvas or a long sheet of paper over his back and his hind paws on the other part of this sheet or this lying on the ground Standing canvas that has loosely wrapped around the dog's body and on which a kind of cup or cornucopia can be seen. The dog looks to the right with its mouth open and threatening gestures. In the shadow behind the threatened pupil and the dog, there are seven other people in the left half of the picture, some of them equipped with painting utensils, some of whom are following the action with perplexed eyes.
On the other side of Seeger is another painter in a white apron from which several brushes or scrapers protrude. He has both arms stretched almost horizontally to the right and left. With his right hand he grabs Seeger's blue skirt or his yellow vest - the angry manager is one of the few elements in the drawing that is partly colored - with his left hand he seems to be holding another angry student by the lapel of his skirt. This second student, to whom several other figures seem to speak or scream, also looks defiantly at Seeger or over him, has put his painting material out of his hands and also clenched them into fists. In contrast to the central figure, this young man wears the uniform of the Karlsschule students. His feet stand on a torch with the inscription “ Prometheus ” lying on the floor - probably a symbolic indication that the young painter feels like a suppressed, trampled genius.
Earlier attempts to identify this young man in the right part of the picture were based on reports from the 19th century, according to which it seemed likely that the later poet Franz Carl Hiemer was depicted here. However, after it became known that this uniformed Charles student was wearing a shoulder strap on his skirt, this theory became invalid. The best students in the individual departments were awarded the shoulder ribbon. The painting student Johann Baptist Seele, who was a friend of Koch, wore this award during his entire school days at the Hohen Karlsschule, so it can be assumed that he is shown on this caricature as a supporter of his friend.
The upward glances of the two rebellious friends meet at the hand of the intendant Seeger, who swings the stick. The other end of the line creates a connection to a second, somewhat smaller and more delicately drawn scene that fills the upper left quarter of the picture. Floating on a higher level and allegorized as it were , the beatings scene is repeated here with slightly different staff. In the same posture as Seeger, a figure dressed in military clothing, this time with a head covering, beats her victim. This victim, this time female and possibly interpreted as a personification of painting, sits with averted face on a cube on which a wheel can be seen in front of an easel and seems to wipe away his tears, while the grimace-like faces of the decorations on the left edge the sheet seem to be grinning. This time the beater is not standing on a floor covered with paintbrushes, etc., but on a bundle of sheaves or rods around which chains with shackles and balls are looped. Behind the beating one sees a painter kneeling in the block , who naturally cannot use his hands, and to the right of it, above an almost horizontally lying statue of Apollo , there is another colorfully dressed figure equipped with numerous attributes.
This figure, which also appears in Koch's drawing “The Painter as Hercules at the Crossroads ” from 1791, holds a kind of lightning bolt with an inscription in his right hand , and possibly a mirror in his left. Her head is adorned with a high wig on which a feather hat is still sitting, as well as with rouge, and a banner extends from the face facing the right side of the picture. Over the shoulders is a cloak, swinging far to the right, apparently decorated with embroidery, which seems to be held together on the chest by a possibly winged head-shaped clasp and under which the figure wears a kind of red jersey. A series of apple-shaped objects, reminiscent of representations of Artemis Ephesia, is attached to the chest of this figure, underneath one can see ribbons fluttering sideways at the level of the belt, to which at least six yellow bags are attached. The figure has unnaturally long, thin legs that seem to consist of twisted blue columns below the knees that end in pointed boots with wheel spurs . Wings are also attached to this footwear, which are also colored yellow and wildly curly. From the left wing of the left boot, a somewhat plucked-looking bird with a shield or a letter in its beak seems to be rising.
The caricature, which is now in the collection of graphics at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart with the inventory number C 4168 , probably contains numerous allusions to the conditions and teaching content at the Hohen Karlsschule. It was shown as part of the Schiller exhibition in Stuttgart , but according to the catalog "for the most part not yet correctly interpreted".
literature
- Sabine Rathgeb, Annette Schmidt, Fritz Fischer, Schiller in Stuttgart , Württembergisches Landesmuseum Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-929055-63-5 , pp. 126–128
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Sabine Rathgeb, Annette Schmidt, Fritz Fischer, Schiller in Stuttgart , Württembergisches Landesmuseum Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-929055-63-5 , p. 128, note 3