What I was saying in the first line is that I know how well read you are so I knew you knew why Matisse came to mind when you saw the early Kirchner. Matisse was more interested in pure aesthetics, though, as the French so are. Kirschner, on the other hand, was being typically teutonic. The Germans added a self-absorbed, psychological element to expressionism.
Regarding playfulness and seriousness, I'm somewhere in the middle. I always point to Goya's Los Capricos or his completely over the top Disparates as examples of really, REALLY dark but very playfully inventive stuff I love. You would probably think it's too dark, because it is. But it was so incredibly inventive. I hate inventive for its own sake, well, in most cases. There's a delicate balance that makes something enjoyable for me. Lately, I'm liking lighter stuff but can't get Goya's aquatints out of my psyche. He set the bar very high for me very early when I came upon them and was blown away by their sheer genius. The way in which they are dark, politically, is not disturbing to me for some reason. Now Bacon... he gives me the creeps, though I love his sense of color. Ha, I love his sense of color. He was a sadomasochist and that stuff creeps me out so incredibly much that it influenced my feelings regarding V for Vendetta when I found out that one of the brothers who made it is a sadomasochist. I was like, eewwwwww, gross.
