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ELSE LASKER-SCHÜLER, FRANZ MARC AND DER STURM

Lasker-Schüler - Marc Correspondence

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For decades, the color blue had been amassing cultural significance as an emblem of the expressive, the dreamy, the unreal. It was present in the exchange between Lasker-Schüler and Marc from the start. Starting from the illusive allusion to the blue rider who would give her a few moment of his time in Lasker-Schülers first communication with Marc, one can follow a game of "blueness" being passed back and forth.

Marc seems to have two modes of using the color blue in his picture-postcards. On the one hand, he colors his figures blue, setting them off from the background, and filling them with an "animalized" energy. In Der Turm der blauen Pferde, a postcard from the beginning of January 1913, blue is the only color that Marc uses apart from black, white, and shades of gray. The horses, in a composition that playfully leaves unresolved the question whether they are standing one on top of the other or one behind the other, fill the viewers eyes with their range of lighter and darker, almost glowing blues. Similarly, in Aus König Jussuffs Nächten (still need to scan) of May of the same year, the figure of a blue horse is hovering above, perhaps falling down from, a mass of silver paper that was used as collage. Set against a monochrome, dark background, the horse attracts the viewer's eyes with its rich blue hue.

On the other hand, Marc sometimes casts the color blue in the opposite role as a background that comprises the far end of the perspective of his compositions, or the backdrop against which figures appear. However, the blue backgrounds that Marc creates are of a fundamentally different nature than his black, gray, green or brown background. Thus, in "Zitronenpferd und Feuerochse des Prinzen Jussuff" the bright yellow and red of the figures that are facing each other, as if about to meet in a kiss or a bite, are complemented by a faceless stain of blues of different densities, in the upper left corner of the composition. The three blots of primary colors create a succession from the bottom of the composition to its top; thus, the piece of blue heaven is "animalized" and turned into a third figure along with the two animals.

Der Traumfelsen, which was sent in September 1913, depicts a bright yellow gazelle resting with her body folded together on her dream-rock. The upper part of the rock is a deep dark blue, which fades into diffuse stains and disappears towards the bottom of the composition. The gazelle and the rock form a single complex figure, diffused with an energy, or a tension of life, that seems to be coming from a single source. This (pantheistic?) unity between the animal and the natural setting in which it is resting is reflected also in the title Marc gave to this postcard, which metonymically transfers the dream from the gazelle to the rock.

Bibliography:

Else Lasker-Schüler/ Franz Marc Mein lieber, wundervoller, blauer Reiter: Privater Briefwechsel, Herausgegeben von Ulrike Marquart und Heinz Röllecke, Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf, 1998.

Der Deutche Expressionismus: Formen und Gestalten, Herausgegeben von Hans Steffen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1965.