Journal of Art Historiography (Dec 2014)
Meaningful, entertaining, popular and ‘Bavarian’: art into design in nineteenth century Munich
Abstract
Among European regional stereotypes few come across as strongly and consistently as ‘Bavaria’. Its strength is derived from the ways in which it appears to be firmly and comprehensively grounded in its land and its people. This article traces the way in which some of the stereotype’s associated forms and images, principally those related to the domestic environment, were first conceived during the nineteenth century. The principal claim is that it was the nineteenth century artists, architects and designers in the Kunststadt Munich, who, helped by the critics, arrived at very specific valorisations of their designs, which could then be applied in an essentialist way to all artefacts of the region, old or new. The article divides the Munich design activities into two phases. During the 1850s designers aimed for a poetic and ‘volkstümlich / popular’ kind of decoration of common objects, including scenes from Bavarian ‘folk’ poetry. In the second phase, during the 1870s and 1880s, interest turned more directly to the domestic environment of Alpine houses, valorising a plain wooden character. Clearly, an absolute belief in in a primeval and unchanging ‘Bavaria’ cannot be entertained any more. But neither should one classify it all as modern kitsch. The latter attitude must be the reason why the subject has hardly been touched on in the copious art histories of Munich so far.
