Bather 

Otto Mueller made this pastel drawing of a bather, sometime in the first decades of the 20th century, in Germany. You can see how Mueller uses a deliberately simplified style to render his female nude. Mueller belonged to a group of artists known as Die Brücke, or The Bridge, whose members sought to overturn academic painting and revitalize German art through the expression of raw emotion. What might it have meant to depict the female nude in this way? The period in which Mueller was working saw the rise of both feminist and nudist movements. Both challenged the conservative social mores of Wilhelmine Germany. It is interesting to consider this image in relation to the rise of new ideas about the body, and the role of women, in German society at this time. Understanding an artwork like this requires us to research its cultural and institutional contexts. Only then can we begin to understand its relationship to the social structures of its time.