Lecture

The Uncanny and the Unliving in Die Brücke’s Studio Pictures

Nov 20 — Nov 20, 2025

Presented by Joseph Henry, CUNY Graduate Center

Joseph Henry, CUNY Graduate Center

The Expressionist artists collectively known as Die Brücke (The Bridge) created studio environments in Dresden and Berlin that blurred the lines between living quarters, workspaces, and sites of pleasure. Filled with wall paintings, batik textiles, and global objects, these immersive environments challenged artistic norms, cultural boundaries, and moral codes. Focusing on works from around 1910, including Erich Heckel’s Girl with Doll (Fränzi), Joseph Henry discusses how Die Brücke blended together people and things, and situates the unsettling mix of art, object, and body within broader pre-War German fascinations with animated matter and the objectification of the female form.

This talk is presented as part of the Fall 2025 Lecture Series, which features a range of scholars with expertise on the art and design of Austria and Germany.

About the Speaker

Joseph Henry received his Ph.D. in Art History at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York this year and was most recently the recipient of a Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Fellowship for academic excellence.

His research focuses on German Expressionism, particularly the artist group Die Brücke, examining how industrial modernity, design, and primitivist aesthetics shaped their work. More broadly, his interests include the relationships between art, labor, and affect; queer visual culture; and performance.

Henry has held research and curatorial fellowships at the Yale University Art Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Dia Art Foundation. His curatorial experience includes contributions to major exhibitions in the United States and Germany. His writing has appeared in GLQ, Oxford Art Journal, and in publications such as Artforum, Art in America, The Brooklyn Rail, and Texte zur Kunst.

LEARN MORE

German Expressionism: The Artist Group Brücke and the Beginnings of Modernism
Edited by Iris Müller-Wermann

German Expressionist Painting
By Peter Selz

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel and Otto Mueller Playing Chess, 1913, oil on canvas, Brücke Museum, Public Domain. In honor of the former owner, the art historian, gallery owner, and collector Dr. Victor Wallerstein (1878–1944). Supported by the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the Cultural Foundation of the German States, and the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation.