Expressionism, German

One of the liveliest controversies in modern humanities scholarship concerns whether or not the German-speaking writers and painters who rebelled against the principles of Realism, Naturalism, and Aestheticism early in the twentieth century represent an artistic movement in the traditional sense of the word; in other words, whether or not there was such a thing as German Expressionism. While the term has been widely used to refer to the theories and products of those avant-garde artists, critics have noted great diversity in both the aesthetic and the ideological aspects of their work, and have therefore questioned their designation as a single movement. It has also been suggested that many works regarded as quintessentially Expressionist, including the paintings and graphics of...