Formal Analysis on Bucolic Landscape

1679 Words7 Pages
11/13/2012 Formal Analysis on Campendonk’s “Bucolic Landscape” Heinrich Campendonk’s “Bucolic Landscape” exemplifies the genre of German expressionism. The playful panoply of colors on canvas, and the composition that borders on, but does not quite reach, the chaotic, engages the viewer in many different ways. Every space of Campendonk’s canvas is consumed in some way by shape, color, texture, and line. Although “Bucolic Landscape” is representational, the features of the landscape borders on the abstract. The viewer can find at least one human figure, and many animal and plant forms in the painting. These naturalistic images are rendered in deconstructive, cubist style and they integrate seamlessly with their environment. Therefore, Campendonk suggests that his subject of a bucolic German landscape connotes the deep connection between the human being and the natural world. Campendonk is, however, keenly aware of the urban encroachment on pastoral peace. The scene is by no means bucolic, in spite of there being farm animals and wild ones as well. Loud colors and frantic lines symbolize rapid industrialization and urban sprawl potentially interfering with the bucolic beauty. Yet rather than interfere, the urban and industrial elements in the composition become as much a part of nature as the cow, deer, and cat to express the connection between human and nature. At the midpoint of the canvas, Campendonk has skillfully created a cross, which visually divides the canvas into four equal quadrants. Moreover, the artist inserts clear (although not always continuous) lines that further affirm the separation of the canvas into quadrants. A horizontal axis and vertical axis complement the angularity of the various elements of the composition, and the cubist forms contained therein. Whereas the horizontal axis appears practically arbitrary from a representational point of
Open Document