This chapter investigates formal pairings of modern and ‘primitive’ art in Der Blaue Reiter almanac (1912) and the Folkwang Museum in Hagen. Designed in 1902 by Henry van de Velde for Karl Ernst Osthaus, the Folkwang was the first museum of modern art and also the first institution to display so-called primitive objects as art. Influenced by the writings of Julius Meier-Graefe, Osthaus installed art objects in ahistorical and strikingly visual displays grounded in the theory and practice of the Gesamtkunstwerk (‘total work of art’). Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc and August Macke adopted some of the Folkwang’s display strategies in Der Blaue Reiter almanac, which featured pairings of modern and ‘primitive’ art alongside musical compositions, poems and a theatre script. However, a close analysis of the almanac’s illustration programme reveals inconsistent understandings of the ‘total work of art’ and its relationship to the primitive. Exploring the points of overlap as well as difference between the Folkwang Museum and Der Blaue Reiter almanac underlines the significance of the Gesamtkunstwerk to European primitivism around 1900.

This chapter examines the changing priorities of German gallerists, art critics and historians, concerning the significance of the first two manifestations of artistic expressionism, namely Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter circles, shifting alliances that would partly lead to their polarization in various monographs on the movement. The significance of art historian Lothar Buchheim, who attempted to define the distinctive character of these expressionist formations, while effectively contributing to this ‘polarization’ is discussed. In addition to considering issues of ‘reception’ from the inception of these avant-gardes through to post-1945 surveys when the phenomenon of expressionism was more closely investigated, this chapter reassesses the web of associations between these Berlin and Munich-based artists, connections and collaborations that have only been mentioned rather than fully discussed in the literature to date. A key aspect of this chapter is an analysis of the ties that link the self-styled leader of Die Brücke, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, with the driving force of Der Blaue Reiter, Wassily Kandinsky, as well as the critical importance of Franz Marc, who was the mediator between both circles. The author also considers the relationship of Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter in light of the aesthetics of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche.

This chapter wagers that situating Walter Benjamin's early writings on language in conversation with Wassily Kandinsky’s in Der Blaue Reiter and Concerning the Spiritual in Art may elucidate Benjamin's hermetic and fragmentary texts. It therefore constructs a dialogue between Kandinsky's writings, which Benjamin read and admired, and Benjamin's rethinking of the relation between language and perception in the late 1910s and early 1920s. It argues that Benjamin's philosophy of language may draw on procedures Kandinsky proposed for defamiliarizing words – for perceiving them as if they were incomprehensible, divorcing them from what Kandinsky calls their ‘practical-instrumental meaning’. Kandinsky speaks of two methods for this: saying a word repeatedly and viewing the form of a letter as a ‘thing’, an arrangement of lines. However, whereas Kandinsky argues for the expressive power of the visual shape of written language, seeing it as something like a living human body communicating emotion through its gestures, Benjamin sees what he calls the word's ‘skeleton’ as expressionless in the extreme. Benjamin both takes on Kandinsky's ideas and turns them upside down: like Kandinsky, Benjamin too imagines the graphic shapes of letters as anthropomorphic, but does so in order to emphasize their deathly expressionlessness.

This chapter takes as its starting point Die Tunisreise, a 2007 film about Paul Klee’s journey to Tunisia in 1914, by the Swiss filmmaker Bruno Moll and Tunisian filmmaker and artist Nacer Khemir. In the film, Khemir retraces the Tunisian journey and reflects on the significance of the Swiss modernist’s appropriation of Tunisian visual culture for his own wide-ranging artistic practice. Whereas Klee’s Tunisian watercolours and related works have often been understood within the framework of Orientalism, McGavran draws upon post-colonial theory to argue that the primitivism of Der Blaue Reiter underpins Khemir’s appreciation for Klee and to elaborate upon cultural exchange between Europe and its former colonies over time.

This chapter argues for an extension of our historical view of Dada to include the vital influence of Munich and Der Blaue Reiter. It focuses on Hugo Ball, founder of Dada, and on his changing engagement with the theatre, with modern art and with the figure of the artist, first in Munich and then in Zurich. The chapter explores how, for Ball, Kandinsky was both the consummate artist and, eventually, a tangential cause of Ball’s disillusionment with and departure from the artistic avant-garde. The chapter brings to light some key primary sources relating to Ball’s ideas for what would become the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. As a whole, it makes a case for a more nuanced account of the relationship between Expressionism and Dada, and between the avant-gardes of Munich and Zurich, before and during World War I.