In the Restaurant

Description

Ernst Kirchner
Germany, 1880–1938
In the Restaurant
1903
Ink on paper
Gift of the Ernst Pulgram and Frances McSparran Collection, 2007/2.98
Ernst Kirchner
Germany, 1880–1938
In the Studio (Erna and Guest)
1912/13
Ink on paper
Gift of the Ernst Pulgram and Frances McSparran Collection, 2007/2.81
Expressionist artists were inspired by the urban environment and its street life, mass transportation, restaurants, cinemas, circuses, cabarets, cafés, and theaters. Ernst Kirchner’s In the Restaurant demonstrates the rapid yet fluid linear sketching style the artist developed to capture the “real life” of urban Dresden. Later this linear sketching was reduced to fewer and thinner lines, as seen
in In the Studio.
For many Expressionists and their collectors, interior domestic spaces became Gesamtkunstwerke (total works) of art-dominated environments. Kirchner’s Berlin studio had every surface covered with painted drapes, statues (depicted on the right of In the Studio), paintings, and artist-designed furniture, all inspired by the art of Oceania. In this sense, In the Studio echoes the restaurant scene: both the city and the studio became constructed environments that completely embraced and surrounded the human figure.