Word: gothic
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Line fascinated the German artists within the Late Gothic tradition. Their love for its abstract and intricate nature is clearly brought out in the Boston Museum's extraordinary exhibition of Durer and his Time. But above all, this show brings out Durer's supreme position among German draughtsmen of the fifteenth century. He was the man who tried to bridge the gap between Late Gothic linear expression and the compositional stability of the Renaissance...
...Late Gothic tradition in Germany was the native inspiration that animated the work of Durer and his contemporaries. Artists working in this style employed interlacing forms and flattened planes, decorative detail, and agitated pen strokes, and displayed strong emotional expression with an interest in man's world in its natural state. More than any other this last characteristic, which we call naturalism, distinguishes the Late Gothic spirit from the idealism of Renaissance...
...Bust of an Old Man by Durer's predecessor, Martin Schongauer, is a pronounced example of the human quality which we associate with Gothic naturalism Schongauer's work provided Durer with an example of naturalism which united the Flemish realistic tradition with the grace and inventiveness of Gothic drawing. Durer's early work, influenced by this example, abounds in ideas, emotional expression, and vivid Gothic naturalism...
...naturalistic interest in detail often becomes an emphasis upon the particular as opposed to the general. In Durer's Samson Conquering the Philistines, as in many Gothic inspired drawings, the strong emotionalism, the decorative detail, and the interlacing forms combine with some conscious symbolism to transform the highly realistic detail into a mystical iconography...
...while the format is classical, the figure he renders is far from an idealized human body. The features of the figure are awkward, bordering on the grotesque, and the line he uses to describe the anatomical details is strong and expressive. Both of these qualities earmark the drawing's Gothic spirit...