Albert Bloch, Duell (Duel)

Ajouté : 2026-05-12

[00:00:04][music] >> We're in Artbridges storage looking at a large painting by Albert Bloch. This dates to 1912.

[00:00:14]When we think of the development of modernism, we think about Paris. But in Munich had been an incredibly important art center both in the previous century and now for these radical new visions in the 20th. Bloch was absorbing some of the most radical developments in European painting. Certainly the work in France but in Germany looking closely at the work of Franz Marc, of Wassily Kandinsky, and other German expressionists. The title of the painting is The Duel and we see precisely that. Choosing to depict a duel at might strike us as an odd choice, but the duel had become a set piece for artists after a famous 19th-century painting by Gerome. We also have certain elements that are very reminiscent of an even older art history. The figure that has been shot has a posture that is very reminiscent of Michelangelo's Pieta and even to the Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David.

[00:01:14]We see the two duelists, one of whom has clearly been shot, laying on the ground supported by a man who we can assume is the sponsor that was with him on the duel. Closer to us in the foreground we see the upright figure, the other duelist, who holds in his left hand a pistol. The hand is simply two contour lines broken only by a third that represents the finger on the trigger now loosened. And so we know this is a moment that has just occurred. His finger is still there. Bloch is able to render the emotions that are passing through each one of these characters.

[00:01:55]The character who is shot, the other duelist, is clearly somewhat indifferent, even pleased. We think about this, the five figures that are in the middle ground of are all playing a role that we can decipher. But this figure that is in the foreground standing straight into the space of the viewer is doing something different. He has his back turned to the duel that has just happened and is confronting the viewer with the emotional charge of what has happened. He comes towards us but is cut just above the waist and so he's somewhat disembodied and becomes alienated from the scene as a whole.

[00:02:32]He's turned around. He's walked towards us. We have to look past him to see the duel itself. And he is not only reminiscent of Edvard Munch's figures, especially the figure in The Scream, especially in the sense of alienation, but he also holds in that bright yellow that we see in his forehead a kind of direct relationship to the figure who has died. But perhaps the event itself is not what's important. It is the emotive experience of this moment, not only of the last moments of the man as he lays dying, but of the mountains, of the sky that is on fire. This is a painting that has to do with passing of a soul and all of its emotional intensity that is a unifying force that brings human tragedy and nature and the world beyond together. We seem to be in some kind of a wooded space, almost like a glade inside of a forest. And so there's something about the structure that makes the scene closed in. This is almost pure abstraction within any of the individual fields that are presented to us. We have this vibrant brushwork.

[00:03:46]We have this complete disregard for texture or light or shadow. There is instead an environment that has taken on a life of its own. It seems as if all of the brushwork points outward, drawing our attention both to the center but also dispersing it outwards, creating that effect almost as if the background was ablaze with energy. One of the best ways of seeing the radicality that this artist is bringing is to look at the face of the man to the right. He wears this oversized purple jacket. His forehead is green flecked with orange and little bits of blue that come through. And then I can't even begin to describe the colors that create the cheekbone. It has nothing to do with the actual coloration of the human face and yet it is defining the forms of that skull beautifully. The notion of an art that could be completely abstract as well as international was very dear and near to Kandinsky as well as to Franz Marc. And so they founded the group that we now know as The Blue Rider. And in fact, Bloch exhibited in both exhibitions. And these were truly landmark moments in the history of modernism. And yet curiously, Bloch is not nearly as well known as Franz Marc, as Wassily Kandinsky. As an American, he complicated the simple narrative of European modernism.

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