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The Blue Rider is here - a lovely sentence, five words -nothing but
stars. I'm now thinking like the moon. Am dwelling in the clouds,
especially in the evenings when no one else is in the streets.... My eyes
hurt as if your sweet horse had kicked up a cloud of dust. Come to me, you
and your spouse, Blue Rider, that I may love you.
The lyric poet Else Lasker-Schuler in a letter to Franz Marc, 9
December 1912
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In 1911 a full tankard of beer
in the Bavarian royal capital of
Munich cost 30 pfennigs. In those days the city on the bar boasted
cultural attractions on a scale that dwarfed the "Oktober Fest". Thomas
Mann was writing Death in Venice in his flat in Schwabmg, the
artistic and cultural hub of Munich. Bruno Walter was conducting the world
premiere of Gustav Mahler's Songs of the Earth at the Conservatory.
Munich gleamed as the centre of the arts. As the lyric poet Else
Lasker-Schuler remarked:
"Munich is like paradise.... Listening to friends playing the accordion; strolling past the windows of the
reverent old stores; old masters, tasteful jewellery, wild weapons from
the tombs of biblical potentates, and everywhere the blue eyes of King
Ludwig!... One can muse so effortlessly in Munich, and recline in comfort
on well-upholstered memories. Here it feels good to be oneself."
However, even the disgruntled Munich of conventional wisdom found
plenty to jolt it out of its stolidity. A performance staged by the nude
dancer Via-Villany made the chamois tufts that Bavarian men wear on their
loden hats wag with indignation. In a former shop in Tuerken Strasse two
men could be seen through the window painting decidedly offensive
pictures. One of them,
Franz Marc, was defiantly brandishing the picture of a horse — painted blue! Loud
protests were heard. The police who rushed to the scene had no legal right
to make the painters stop what they were doing so they contented
themselves with patrolling the area around the shop to keep public wrath from
erupting.
Marc and his colleague
Vasily Kandinsky were committed to
encouraging a dialogue between painting, literature and music with the
purpose of "radically widening the bounds of expressive creativity". In 1912 they published an almanac that
caused a sensation. It contained nineteen articles and quoted passages,
three musical scores and 141 reproductions of pictures, including folk art
and children's paintings and drawings, "primitive, Roman and Gothic art",
"twentieth-century art" and Egyptian shadow-play figures. By bringing
together this jumbled mixture of artworks they hoped to encourage other
artists to venture in new directions. The almanac bore the title "Blauer
Reiter" (Blue Rider). "We thought up the name round the coffee table in
the shade of
Marc's garden", Kandinsky said, adding: "We both loved blue,
Marc — horses, and I — riders. The name came of its own accord". Soon
afterwards, the Blue Rider had their first exhibition. Never tightly organised, the group consisted of a circle of artists around
Marc and
Kandinsky. Marc found animals "purer" than human beings. In his work, blue
stood for masculinity, astrmgency and intellect. The horse was the
attribute of the popular saints Martin and George, who as celestial riders
conquered evil and materialism.
Marc and
Kandinsky contrived to emulate
them in art. The Blue Rider did not last long; it dissolved in 1916 after
Franz Marc was killed in action at Verdun.
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