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CHOICE Review

A major contribution to the scholarship of German Expressionism. Gordon has expanded the normative approach to Expressionism by exploring wider contexts in detail. He presents expressionism in its broadest philosophical, historical, and intellectual milieu-parallel in its development with the ideas of Nietzsche and within the context of the social ideas prevalent in the early 20th century, and with the conditions surrounding WW I in Europe. The early chapters set the rigorous intellectual tone for the rest of the book, which is a wonder of organization. Gordon explores the phenomena of Expressionism from the most diverse yet important aspects: intellectual milieu, iconography, style, social psychology, and art criticism; he deals with each of these areas in a scholarly and complete manner. The section on style marks out major distinctions between movements such as the Bruecke, the Blaue Reiter, and postwar Expressionist tendencies; the chapter on art criticism encompasses attitudes as diverse as the notion of individual artistic renewal to the threat of nationalist interests that basically were hostile to the movement of Expressionism. Gordon has taken Expressionism out of its too narrowly defined Germanic setting, exploring the phenomenon from its inception to Abstraction Expressionism in America, as well as in its recent reincarnation in the neo-Expressionist tendencies of the eighties.-K. Dills, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo