Critics have widely highlighted the cultural communion between Kirchner's art and Simmel's thinking, about social and psychic life in the modern metropolis. In this essay I will investigate their similar humanistic and social sensitivity towards prostitution, one of the most serious social, humanitarian and criminal phenomena in Germany (Berlin and Hambirg in primis) between the end of the 19th century and the First World War. Predicting from the Simmel’s studies on the prostitution and the social role of money, I will read the street scenes of Berlin portrayed by Kirchner, as an extraordinary historical source that documents the atmosphere of human alienation and bourgeois hypocrisy, then produced by criminalization policies of the prostitution.
Ex malis minima. Kirchner, Simmel, and the "tragic mask” of prostitution
PICCHIO, MARTA
2020
Abstract
Critics have widely highlighted the cultural communion between Kirchner's art and Simmel's thinking, about social and psychic life in the modern metropolis. In this essay I will investigate their similar humanistic and social sensitivity towards prostitution, one of the most serious social, humanitarian and criminal phenomena in Germany (Berlin and Hambirg in primis) between the end of the 19th century and the First World War. Predicting from the Simmel’s studies on the prostitution and the social role of money, I will read the street scenes of Berlin portrayed by Kirchner, as an extraordinary historical source that documents the atmosphere of human alienation and bourgeois hypocrisy, then produced by criminalization policies of the prostitution.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
