My
students, art majors all, have been complaining about the readings I’ve been
assigning as of late. These handouts—essays and excerpted vignettes by writers
as diverse as Ernst Gombrich, Fairfield Porter, Camille Paglia, and Robertson
Davies—are intended to give students an idea of the sweeping nature of art and
art-making, both within academia and out in the much vilified “real world.”The
point of these readings—or one of them, anyway—is to encourage students to
think beyond mere self-expression and underline that, in the end, art achieves
its own wily independence. The complaint is that the handouts are dispiriting.
This response is prompted, in part, by the dawning realization—a realization
that gains in intensity the closer graduation approaches—that the artist’s life
is a tough row to hoe. There’s the cost of studio space in New York City, the
vagaries of commerce, the niceties of keeping a roof over one’s head and, not
least, the state of the world. What is the worth of art in an age of economic
freefall, rampant terrorism, unceasing wars, and distracting technologies?
Positivity of some sort would seem to be in order.
And then I
found just the reading during an attempt at clearing out my bookshelves.
Pulling out a dusty copy of Theories of Modern Art, Herschel B. Chipp’s
indispensable compendium of statements, manifestos, and observations by
artists, critics, and sundry outliers, I opened it to a random page. There I
read that “art is creative for the sake of realization, not for amusement; for
transfiguration, not for the sake of play.” The writer continues:
There are two worlds: the world of spiritual
life and the world of political reality. Both are manifestations of life which
may sometimes coincide but are very different in principle. I must leave it to
you to decide what is the more important.
What
follows is an avowal, albeit a quixotic one, of art’s primacy in the face of
devastation—written, no less, by a refugee fleeing a culture upended by a group
of demagogues bent on world domination, ethnic purity, and with few qualms
about the cost these goals might take in human life. “Human sympathy and
understanding must be reinstated . . . in the midst of a boundless world
turmoil.” “On My Painting,” a 1938 lecture by the German artist Max Beckmann,
carries with it echoes of life, here, in the twenty-first century.
Although
Beckmann refused to explain the symbolism of repeated motifs like crowned
figures, fish, ladders and brass instruments, he was clear about one issue. He
did not believe in complete abstraction, completely flattened forms, or extreme
stylization. Although he compressed space, and is said to have had a horror
vacui of deep space (based on battlefield trauma of volunteering as a medical
orderly during World War I), he insisted on an empathic identification with
actual objects, and the depiction of space and air around them.
Beckmann
said, “If the canvas is only filled with a two-dimensional conception of space,
we shall have applied art, or ornament. To transform three into two dimensions
is for me an experience full of magic.” (Max Beckmann, “On My Painting,”
lecture, first read in London, July 21, 1938.) In an earlier essay, he had
written, “Quality [is] the feeling […] for the peach-colored sheen of skin, for
the glint of a nail, for the sensual in art, which resides in the softness of
flesh in the depth and gradation of space, not only on the surface but also in
depth.” (Max Beckmann, “Thoughts on Timely and Untimely Art.” In Pan, March 14,
1912.)
Across
several countries and decades, he resisted movements that propounded
abstraction and pictorial flatness as the apex of painting. He lived in
Germany, Amsterdam, and the United States, but he was not an expressionist or
pioneer of abstraction like Franz Marc, Kandinsky, or Mondrian, or a New York
School Abstract Expressionist. His work was shown in the 1923 exhibition in
Mannheim, for which curator Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub coined the movement Neue
Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), but Beckmann was never an overt a societal
chronicler as peers Otto Dix and George Grosz. His was not an easy position to
occupy; he didn’t fit any established art historical narrative.
Beckmann
was in some form of exile for most of his life. He had a nervous breakdown
after his service in World War I and did not return to family life with his
first wife and son. In the 1930s he was declared a degenerate artist by the
Nazis, and was exiled to Amsterdam for a decade. He was never able to penetrate
the French art world or the Paris market. He arrived in the United States in
1947, first teaching at Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri, and
then in New York, where he taught at the Brooklyn Museum Art School.
The Neue
Galerie painting is one of seven self-portraits viewers encounter upon entering
“Max Beckmann in New York.” As opening gambits go, it’s pretty bracing and
divulges a surprising admixture of whimsy and artifice. The earliest
self-portraits on display are dated 1923; the last is from 1950, the year of
Beckmann’s death at sixty-six. Stylistically, Beckmann moved from softly
modeled forms to flattened areas of color held in check by brushy black lines.
(With the exception of Matisse, and including Picasso, no other twentieth-century
painter employed black with as much dexterity or nuance.) Beckmann is revealed
to have been more of a showman than some of us previously thought. Cognizant of
the status conferred upon The Artist, Beckmann toyed with its presumptions.
Whether donning a sailor suit or what looks to be a pair of pajamas, or even
(and this is the giveaway) surrounding himself with circus trappings, Beckmann
engages in a hugely underplayed form of self-deprecation. His “disdain for
people was considerable,” wrote a journalist taking note of the artist in the
early twenties, but “under his prickly shell he concealed a highly vulnerable
sensitivity, one that he sometimes mockingly exposed.”
The impetus
for “Max Beckmann in New York” is Self-Portrait in Blue Jacket, the afore-mentioned
canvas from 1950. Painted during the winter and spring of that year, Beckmann
depicted himself as being more vigorous and virile than the rumpled figure seen
in photographs of the time. The stony visage and ever-present cigarette we know
about, but Beckmann’s torso swells upward like those of the warriors seen on
the red Attic vases of ancient Greece, heroic images from which he took
inspiration. The painting isn’t without its well-played ironies: an insomniac
suffering from heart ailments and given to anxiety should be allowed some
license when translating physical frailty into pictorial muscle. Beckmann’s
health gave out on the corner of Sixty-ninth Street and Central Park West–he
died of a heart attack on the way to see “American Painting 1950,” an
exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Among that show’s featured
attractions? Self-Portrait in Blue Jacket. The story is poignant (as Ms. Rewald
notes), but am I alone in feeling that the artist might have derived a grim
pleasure in its you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up circumstances?
Beckmann
was in some form of exile for most of his life. He had a nervous breakdown
after his service in World War I and did not return to family life with his
first wife and son. In the 1930s he was declared a degenerate artist by the
Nazis, and was exiled to Amsterdam for a decade. He was never able to penetrate
the French art world or the Paris market. He arrived in the United States in
1947, first teaching at Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri, and
then in New York, where he taught at the Brooklyn Museum Art School.
It may be
inconvenient for art historians, but in his painting, Beckmann never gave us
everything; he doesn’t allow us to penetrate meaning that way. It is not an
accident that Beckmann loved costumes and guises. His painting is
poly-referential, suggestive through form rather than content. Addressing his
first class at Washington University in 1947 (an advanced painting class he
took over from Philip Guston), Beckmann said:
Please do remember this maxim – the most important I can give you: If
you want to reproduce an object, two elements are required: first, the
identification with the object must be perfect; and secondly, it should
contain, in addition, something quite different. This second element is
difficult to explain. Almost as difficult as to discover one’s self.
His
painting “Falling Man” is difficult to explain, which makes it tempting for an
art historian to describe it as a foreshadowing of television news images we
saw on 9/11. The painting has also been interpreted as an illustration of
Beckmann’s spiritual interests. Like other artists of his generation, he was
interested in Theosophy, the concept of the fourth dimension, and he studied
Indian philosophy and the Vedas. And yes, Beckmann seemed to embrace the idea,
as an artist, that he could be a seer and truth-teller. But “Falling Man” is
magic by its own internal, impossible contradictions. The legs and feet are
oversized, weighty, splayed, taking up a large piece of the upper part of the
painting. Clouds are pressed up against the picture plane; they are thick,
tangible paint, all about air and atmosphere, yet they are also light enough to
pass though the figure and the tall building at the left.
Beckmann’s
painting does not position itself on any one side of a polemical position.
Rewald refers to “Bird’s Hell” (1938) as his clearest indictment of Nazism.
While this is likely true — the painting is full of nightmarish, weird,
perverse imaginings – it is still, determinedly, a message told in metaphor:
formal and imagistic. Across his entire body of work, Beckmann matches
perversity with tenderness, detachment with intimacy, angst and darkness with
celebration and rich color.
He loved
to paint women and figures with splayed legs – this vision goes all the way
back to the 1906 painting “Death Scene,” made in response to the premature
death of his mother. Curiously, a female nude squats at the bedside in grief.
The squatting or splayed-leg pose is a leitmotif across his triptychs, and it
is featured prominently in “Columbine.” But his depictions of his second wife,
Quappi, are about wholeness. In a painting like “Quappi in Grey” (1948), her
small, delicate features are held together in Beckmann’s hand, and with his
line.
Among the
most striking aspects of Beckmann’s vision is that, notwithstanding his
meditations on human folly and vice, it never descends into nihilism or
despair. The paintings bristle and bump with appetite—for life’s absurdities,
absolutely, but primarily for life itself. It’s worth mentioning that a number
of Beckmann pictures concern themselves with everyday epiphanies—the ocean as
seen from a hotel terrace; the forest surrounding a university town; an
untended corner of the studio; and his beloved Quappi, whose handsome
countenance appears repeatedly in the oeuvre. The center panel of Departure has
famously—and rightfully—been cited as a marker of Beckmann’s holistic
worldview. Blue skies and family, the painting would seem to suggest, sustain
us in the midst of history’s cruelest turns. It’s no surprise that Beckmann
disliked being lumped in with the Expressionists: self-pity and narcissism were
antithetical to the “fullness, roundness, and the vitally pulsing” to which he
aspired. The stern and heady embrace of “essential things” is palpable
throughout “Max Beckmann in New York,” and is but one reason we should look to
this demanding artist as a guidepost in our troubled times
Beckmann’s
“Self-Portrait with Cigarette” belonged to the Metropolitan Museum until 1971,
when its deaccession set off a series of disputes that reshaped museum
practices.
Rachel
High: As you've just mentioned, the book includes works made by Beckmann while
he was living in New York as well as works in New York collections. He didn't
live here for very long, but what role did the city play in Beckmann's
reception as an artist?
Sabine
Rewald: He lived here at the time of the emerging Abstract Expressionist
artists. When The Met organized the exhibition American Painting Today, these
artists—called "The Irascibles"—wrote a protest letter to the
Museum's president because they were enraged that such conservative works were
shown. The letter made the front page of The New York Times and a group
photograph was later made of them for Life magazine; I illustrate it in my
catalogue. Beckmann and the Abstract Expressionists were like ships in the
night; he had no idea or interest in what was going on in those circles. He
wouldn't set foot in any of the galleries that showed that type of work. Beckmann's
work was not much in demand at that time. While he was in voluntary exile in
Amsterdam, people admired him for his heroic stance. After a few years in the
United States, sales did not go so well. To subsidize his artwork, he taught at
the Brooklyn Museum Art School and, in September 1950, he took on an additional
teaching position at an art school at West 130th Street. The job did not last
long. The school went bankrupt in mid-November. So, being in New York was more
for his mental well-being than for his career.
Rachel
High: A common thread in your past publications is that they include excerpts
from the artist's letters, journals, and other writings, and this book is no
exception. How do Beckmann's writings to help the reader understand him and his
work?
Sabine
Rewald: His writing sheds not a single light on his paintings. He hated to have
to interpret his work. When The Museum of Modern Art was thinking of buying Max
Beckmann's first triptych, The Departure, which is in the catalogue and the
exhibition, Curt Valentin was asked by director Alfred Barr to ask Beckmann
what the painting depicted. Beckmann liked to mingle the metaphysical with
realism and people often cannot make head or tail out of what is going on in
his paintings. Beckmann retorted, "well, if he wants to know what's going
on just tell him to return the picture." He wouldn't descend to give
interpretations. Once he said, pointing to the sky, "only he upstairs
knows what's going on." He hated when people asked for the meaning.
The
Germans invaded Amsterdam in 1940 and Beckmann destroyed his diaries up until
that year, so only his diaries from 1940 to 1950 are published. They tell you
things of daily life, of people who he met, how many hours he worked, of the
weather, and of walks, wherever he went. It is interesting to compare the
original diaries to the published text. The published diaries were carefully
edited by his wife Quappi, who took out derogatory remarks about those still
alive then and references to his frequent visits to the Plaza Hotel for a
"recovery drink," or two. His original writings are all in Sütterlin,
a type of old German script that was taught in German schools when Beckmann was
young. On some of his paintings his signature is in Sütterlin. It's very difficult
to read and near impossible for someone who isn't German to understand. I'll
tell you, I've never worked on a tougher artist than Beckmann. He's tough.
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