Fate of the Animals: On Horses the Apocalypse and Painting as Prophecy: 2 (Three Paintings Trilogy)

In 1913 Franz Marc one of the key figures of German Expressionism created a masterpiece: The Fate of the Animals. With its violent slashes of color and line the painting seemed to pre-figure both the outbreak of World War I and more eerily Marcs own death in an artillery barrage at the Battle of Verdun three years later.With his signature blend of wide-ranging erudition and lively accessible prose Morgan Meis explores Marcs painting in depth guided in part by a series of letters Marc wrote to his wife Maria while he was a soldier in the war. In those letters Marc explores the nature of art the fate of European civilization and the inner spiritual nature of all life. Along the way Meis brings in other artists such as D.H. Lawrence Edgar Degas and Paul Klee to flesh out his argument. The Fate of the Animals also explores the darker undercurrents of German apocalyptic thinking in Marcs time especially Norse mythology and the ancient Vedic texts as they influenced Schopenhauer Nietzsche and Heidegger. The Fate of the Animals is the second volume of Meiss Three Paintings Trilogy the first volume of which The Drunken Silenus examined a painting by Rubens. The third volume (forthcoming) will consider a painting by Joan Mitchell.