Kirchner Vs. Renoir

Although Ernst Kirchner and Pierre Renoir painted similar topics their approaches were very different. Renoir changed from the fleeting style of impressionism to personalizing his work; it was no longer a detached reflection of one moment in time. Kirchner’s work was highly decorative and emotional; he strove to make the audience aware of themselves through color and abstraction. Though these two paintings seem very similar, they are infact very different. The aims of the artists and how they got to that goal are the most notable differences.

Renoir was born in 1841 and lived until 1919; he started his career as a painter as an impressionist (Hunter). Around the early 1880’s Renoir, along with most of his fellow impressionists, had a change in their work (Hunter). This period is known as the crisis of impressionism. After that Renoir’s work was so longer just a fleeting image or anything that he walked by on the street. It was no longer studies of light and vague images. He became more intimate with his work. The subject matter in Bather with Long Hair (1895) is a classic painting subject. It has been painted over and over since the beginning of the renaissance. The woman is also painted in the renaissance style. She is curvaceous, the shadowing on her body is soft, and her flesh is perfectly shaped and supple. She has long flowing hair. She is also not looking at the viewer, making them feel comfortable in staring at her. Her breasts are small and unobtrusive. Her vagina is painted as if there is nothing there, as if it is simply a flat place where the legs meet the torso. She is holding a towel or dress on the shore of the pond she is bathing in. The background is blurred into a soft, suggestive landscape. The water is minimal and flows around her legs as she moves toward the shore. Everything about this painting is a shying away from anything innovative. The colors are all soft and blend together as well. There are very few differences between this painting and the paintings of the renaissance masters. The only thing innovative about it is the brushwork. Instead of having the brushwork be perfectly flat and smooth it is slightly broken. The water especially shows plain brush strokes and the skin has a fuzzy appearance because of the brushwork used. The intent of Renoir in painting this was to take a step back from the impressionistic work that he had been doing. He wanted to really focus on a subject and become intimate with it. He took a step backwards to the renaissance and a step towards Manet’s style.

Kirchner, who lived from 1880 to 1938, was a member of the Die Brucke group (The Bridge). This group was an expressionist group in Germany that was well known for their emotional intensity, use of decorative colors, and the abstract symbolism (Hunter). The woman Kirchner painted in Girl with Japanese Parasol (1909) is painted in a very confrontational manner. She is laying down staring straight at the viewer. Other than the general shape of a human form and a parasol there is little other connection to reality. The rest of the painting, color being the most obvious, is based upon the emotion of Kirchner while he was painting. He used a bright yellow for most of the figure