Sunday afternoon (Werefkin)
“Sunday afternoon” is the title of a painting that the Russian artist Marianne von Werefkin painted in 1908. The work belongs to the holdings of the Fondazione Marianne Werefkin (FMW) in Ascona . It has the inventory number FMW-0-0-11 there. The painting is inscribed "MW". The corresponding sketch , a colorful gouache , is in the FMW sketchbook dated 1908.
Technology and dimensions
It is a tempera painting on cardboard , 36.5 × 50.5 cm.
iconography
Munch bonds
The painting shows Werefkin's formal and iconological relationship with Edvard Munch . Without a doubt, she was inspired by his "Self-Portrait with Wine Bottle" from 1906. However, she implemented Munch's painting according to personal feelings and experiences, analogous to a statement by Munch: “I don't paint what I see, but what I saw”, which largely corresponds to the programmatic demands of Gauguin and his students from Pont-Aven . The swaps and changes that she made in her picture compared to the original are revealing. She moved the incident z. B. from the interior of a restaurant in a landscape, probably a Bavarian beer garden is meant. In Munch's picture at least one table is set. Waiters in the background are waiting for more guests. At Werefkin the tables are empty and the guests are not served. In both pictures there is no communication, neither with the viewer nor among the sitters. They are stories of loneliness, abandonment and emptiness.
The forced perspective
If Munch's picture shows three side-by-side long-format tables on the wall and the window side to the left and right of the aisle of a restaurant in a foreshortened perspective, Werefkin changed this to a row of twice as many tables, which she, however, transformed into landscape formats. While the rows of tables end on the back wall of the Munch restaurant, in Werefkin's picture they lead like steps to the high horizon into nowhere and become the main theme of the picture, the “forced perspective”. Werefkin's colleague Erma Bossi later explored the forced perspective in a particularly interesting way by simultaneously questioning it.
Repoussoir figures
The overemphasis on the perspective construction stands in the picture of the Werefkin in clear contrast to the silhouette-like and flat design of the tree crown on the right in the picture. The contrast between proximity and distance, spatial depth and flatness emerges. In Munch, the self-portrayed person looks out of the picture as a half-length with a lost look. In Werefkin's work, the sitters turn their backs on the viewer, become repoussoir figures and thus intensify the effect of a deep pull.
literature
- Clemens Weiler : Marianne von Werefkin. In exh. Cat .: Marianne Werefkin 1860–1938. Municipal Museum Wiesbaden 1958, cat.no. 30, undated (p. 10)
- Bernd Fäthke: Marianne Werefkin and her influence on the Blue Rider. In: exhib. Cat .: Marianne Werefkin, paintings and sketches. Museum Wiesbaden 1980, cat. No. 24, b / w illus. P. 70
- Bernd Fäthke: Marianne Werefkin. Munich 2001, p. 121, fig. 125, ISBN 3-7774-9040-7
- Bernd Fäthke : Marianne Werefkin: Clemens Weiler's Legacy. In: Marianne Werefkin and the Women Artists in her Circle. (Tanja Malycheva and Isabel Wünsche eds.), Leiden / Boston 2016 (English), pp. 8–19, ISBN 978-9-0043-2897-6 , pp. 8–19, here pp. 14–19; JSTOR 10.1163 / j.ctt1w8h0q1.7
Individual evidence
- ↑ The painting was first published by: Clemens Weiler: Marianne von Werefkin. In exh. Cat .: Marianne Werefkin 1860-1938. Municipal Museum Wiesbaden 1958, cat.no. 30, undated (p. 10)
- ↑ Inv. No. 45-9-637-9 / 42-43
- ^ Werner Timm: Edvard Munch, graphics. Stuttgart / Berlin / Cologne / Mainz 1969, p. 27
- ^ Emil Maurer : Munch: Motives of the picture direction. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 14./15. November 1987, p. 65.
- ↑ Bernd Fäthke: Erma Bossi, an expressionist from the very beginning. WELTKUNST, October 1, 1999, p. 1893