Roaring deer
The roaring deer is a motif from wild painting , which is often considered the epitome of kitsch and the trivial mural printing of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Art historical development
_merged.jpg)
The motive of the rutting deer on the slopes or in the mountain lake landscape comes from the academic painting of the late Romantic period . The academic influence here brought forth pronounced animal painters , including wildlife portraits such as Christian Kröner , Guido von Maffei and Moritz Müller , who almost always depicted the roaring deer in side view with a puff in front of the mouth. These pictures were not only hung in art exhibitions, but were also immediately reproduced photographically for art lovers. They illustrated hunting stories as wood or copper engravings, such as those in the well-known family magazine Die Gartenlaube , which after 1870 met the crowd's need for pictures. In 1899 a plaster cast of the Screaming Deer sculpture by Richard Rusche was shown at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition .
Together with the previously existing motif of the cross deer of St. Hubertus , the roaring deer gained popularity as a mural print , which was not only due to the desire for rural-Alpine folklore, but also to the social prestige associated with the princely love of game and hunting. The motif not only adorned paintings and their color reproductions, but also glasses, mugs, mugs, ties and cufflinks. Until the 1960s, the roaring stag could be found in department stores, including porcelain figurines made by painting factories. The motif is now a synonym for kitsch in art.
Psychological interpretations
In terms of depth psychology , the motif can be interpreted sexually. In addition to the obvious fact that it is a love scene from animal life, the stretched deer body can be interpreted as a phallic symbol and the hot breath as ejaculate. The Duden Basic Knowledge School also sees the pictures as a symbol of the glorification and supremacy of men as well as the capitalist competition. The art writer Ludwig Pietsch is quoted, who in 1886 described Christian Kröner's picture Besiegt - Motif vom Brocken, which shows the fatal outcome of a stag fight, in the following words:
- “Kröner's magnificent picture depicts the outcome of such a tragedy in the stag's life, the jealousy of a rival, with unsurpassable art and full of violence of the truth of expression. At the feet of the victor, who pierced him with the prongs of his antlers, lies the defeated opponent on the blood-covered forest floor. The latter, however, stretching his head far forward, lets out a scream which, like a fanfare of triumph, descends far over the Haide. The hinds and the other animals of the pack hear him, and half shyly, half curiously they listen to the sound and look at the battlefield, at the victor and the vanquished vanquished. But the beauties are kind to the strong and any compassion for the dead will quickly enough give way to tenderness for the murderer. "
In addition to secular motifs such as fairies or religious works such as Untersberger's Mount of Olives Christ, the "roaring stag" played a subordinate role in popular wall decorations. The idea that the latter was typical of bedroom pictures before the Second World War is therefore incorrect. Wolfgang Brückner saw the desire for erotic interpretations associated with the sex wave as a reason for the emergence of this inaccurate association.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Wolfgang Brückner: The roaring stag: symbol of trivial art? Symbol of an era !, p. 492
- ↑ a b Article in Duden Basic Knowledge School: Art
literature
- Bazon Brock : The Roaring Deer: Artist and a symbol of trivial art. In: Bazon Brock: Aesthetics as mediation, working biography of a generalist. Pp. 380-383. DuMont, Cologne 1977, ISBN 3-7701-0671-7 ( online )
- Wolfgang Brückner: The roaring stag: symbol of trivial art? Symbol of an era! In Wolfgang Brückner: Folklore as historical cultural studies. Volume 6: Art and consumption: mass image research (= publications on folklore and cultural history, volume 82), pp. 490–494. Bavarian Folklore Papers, Würzburg 2000
- The roaring stag - the motif of the petty bourgeois room decoration. In Simone Felgentreu (Ed.): Duden basic knowledge school: Art. Duden, Mannheim 2005, ISBN 3-411-71971-0 (online at schuelerlexikon.de )
- Jörg Seifert: “Between glass saws and roaring deer. Comments on the aesthetic value judgment of architects and laypeople ”, in What is beauty? archithese 5.2005, pp. 40-45, ISBN 3-7212-0553-7
