Title: Adolph Menzel : the quest for reality /
Authors: Busch, Werner; Kleinstück-Schulman, Carola,; Getty Research Institute
Year: 2017
Subjects: Menzel, Adolph, Criticism and interpretation.; Menzel, Adolph,; Realism in art.; Art, German; Art, German.; Realism in art
Contents: "When anecdotes become truth"-instead of an introduction -- Extreme approaches to the appropriation of reality: Menzel's beginnings as a graphic artist -- Des Künstlers Erdenwallen (the artist's earthly pilgrimage) -- Arabesque commercial prints -- Journeyman bricklayer's certificate -- The art of the celebratory address -- The possibilities of the black-and-white medium: Menzel's illustrations for Franz Kugler's Geschichte Friedrichs des grossen -- Menzel's image of Frederick II: a typological affinity -- Frederick's battles and the horror of war -- Nocturnal apparitions -- The conquest of chromatic painting: Menzel's oil sketches -- The oil sketch as a genre -- The handling of unattractive sights and views -- The private nature of the oil sketches -- Menzel and Constable -- Menzel and the Barbizon School -- From oil sketch to history painting -- Menzel as a history painter: the Frederick paintings -- Genre or history painting? -- Motivic borrowings from popular art -- Menzel's Hochkirch picture: the extreme case of a new kind of history painting -- Commissions for additional Frederick paintings -- The failure of the Leuthen painting and the unloved commission for the Coronation picture -- The farewell to history painting: Königgrätz and Paris -- Fantasies from the armory -- Menzel's experience of war -- In Paris: Théâtre du gymnase -- The remodeling of the metropolis and the typology of its inhabitants -- Pictures of Sundays and the everyday -- Menzel's reaction to Parisian plein air painting -- After Paris: the later crowd scenes -- Painted reflections on art theory -- The iron rolling mill: apotheosis of labor or social critique? -- Menzel and court society -- Piazza d'Erbe: importunate chaos and enforced order -- Drawing as physical experience of the self.