Viking Eggeling and European Avant-Garde Cinema
In: A Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries 1925-1950Search for other papers by Malte Hagener in
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Abstract
The Swedish artist Viking Eggeling (1880–1925) is a curious case in avant-garde studies. Even though his filmic oeuvre is small and he is overshadowed in retrospect by protagonists such as Hans Richter and Walter Ruttmann, he nevertheless has a firm place in cinema history. In this essay we evaluate Eggeling’s contribution to European avant-garde cinema and look more closely at his legacy in avant-garde film culture during his lifetime and especially after his untimely death. The central question is how a film-maker with such a minuscule oeuvre could become in retrospect one of the central film-makers of the non-figurative avant-garde in the 1920s. In what way, and for what reasons, did Eggeling become part of the canon of avant-garde film and film history, which has been practically unchanged since the late 1940s?