Soap Bubbles and Apocalypse
Max Beckmann’s Colored
Paper Works at Frankfurt’s Schirn
For the first time, an exhibition is exclusively showing Max Beckmann’s
watercolors and pastels – portraits and beach scenes as well as works
depicting private or mythological motifs. Although Beckmann is one of the
most important artists of the 20th century, many of these works have never
before been shown publicly. The exhibition, which can be seen through the
end of May at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, was supported by the
Deutsche Bank Foundation. A report by Achim Drucks.
A
mysterious scene appears before a jet-black background: a young woman is
hanging upside-down from the ceiling, and her dress, which has slipped
down, exposes her back and naked thighs. A man in a tuxedo is standing to
her left, while a hand is reaching out from the right. The window, chair,
and lamp are indicated with a minimum of strokes, signalizing that this
obscure Meeting in the Night is taking place in an interior,
probably in a whorehouse. What stands out in the vertical-format pastel
work from 1928 is the contrast between the sketchy depiction of the man
and the plastic presence of the object of his desire.
Max Beckmann sketched out the man using only a few white chalk lines on a
black watercolor background, while he carefully rendered the woman’s naked
body, thus making her the center of the piece. Only a few details are
accentuated in color.
Max Beckmann, Raub der Europa, 1933
©VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2006
This
large-scale paper work, one of the highlights of the exhibition
Max Beckmann – The Watercolors and Pastels, conjures the
erotically charged situation with a great economy of artistic means. The
comprehensive show at the Schirn
marks the first opportunity to compare Beckmann’s colored paper works with
one another. To this purpose, over a hundred pieces, many of which have
never before been seen in public, are gathered together in the exhibition
space in Frankfurt. The
Deutsche Bank Foundation has supported the show because the bank is
connected to the artist in a special way: Beckmann was one of the first to
win the
Villa Romana Prize, which has long been supported by Deutsche Bank, and 25
of his works are part of the bank’s
collection.
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Max Beckmann, Selbstbildnis mit
Seifenblasen, ca. 1900, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2006
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Max Beckmann, Selbstportrait, from
the series "Tag und Traum", 1946, Deutsche Bank Collection
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Beckmann in private. In small cinematic cuts, the prologue
to the exhibition presents the artist from his athletic side: swimming, on
the tennis court, or skiing together with his second wife,
Quappi. An ideal lead into the show, which is not purely dedicated to the
serious side of the "mythic painter"; Beckmann’s paintings on paper,
particularly the still lifes and landscapes, seem more spontaneous, soft,
and relaxed than his famous canvases. The chronologically ordered show
begins with an early self-portrait made in 1900: the 16 year-old is
sitting on a bench blowing soap bubbles into the air, confidently jutting
out his trademark chin. Beckmann’s initial artistic ventures oscillated
between Impressionism and Symbolism; in expressive drawings and graphic
pieces, he worked through his mental breakdown as a volunteer in the First
World War. Throughout the twenties, he established himself in Frankfurt as
an artist and professor at the
Städel School. During this time, he increasingly began
investigating watercolor and pastel – portraits, still lifes, and nudes
took the place of the darker images of war. His Still Life with Lilies
of the Valley from 1925 is a light, loose composition of spring
colors, while his Reclining Woman is sensuous and the young Fänn
Schniewind elegant and vulnerable in her portrait.
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Max Beckmann, Liegende, 1932,
©VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2006
In 1933, the Nazis dismissed the painter from his professorship at the Städel
School. That year, Beckmann made large-scale watercolors with existential
themes that compare in quality with his best paintings. A melancholy
Woodcutter is sitting between two tree stumps; his only companion is
his dog. Murder portrays the arrival of chaos in the bourgeois
world: a pair of naked feet are protruding from a bloody sheet in the
chaos of a completely devastated room.
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Max Beckmann, Odysseus und Sirene,
1933,
©VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
2006
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The relationship between the sexes is examined in works
such as Brother and Sister and Ulysses and the Siren, which
shows the man as a potential victim – helplessly dependent on the song of
an eerie cross between woman and predatory bird, which he would follow
immediately if he weren’t tied to the mast of his ship. The wrecks of
stranded ships surrounding the sirens indicate what giving in to
temptation actually means.
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Max Beckmann, Strandszene mit
Sonnenschirm, 1936,
©VG
Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2006
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The thirties were a restless time for Beckmann; initially
because he traveled frequently with his wife, and later because he had to
flee from the Nazis. Colored paper works increasingly arose during this
time. Compared to oil painting, watercolor is the ideal medium for “the
road”;
Dürer already recorded his travel impressions in watercolor.
Numerous landscape images arose in Upper Bavaria, while on the Dutch
coast, the portrait of Quappi in a café or untroubled beach scenes reveal
nothing of the artist’s tense situation prior to his emigration in 1937.
The last works that can be seen in Frankfurt were made in exile in the
United States. By this time, Beckmann’s cosmos had grown quite dark, as
can be seen in disturbing scenes such as The Dogs Grow Larger,
which depicts dogs threatening a screaming woman, or Early Men, a
piece he worked on over several years. Monstrous beings are hatching from
gigantic eggs in a prehistoric landscape, while huge fish are swimming
across the sky. This composition’s scene goes beyond the pictorial
inventions of his paintings in a surreal and mysterious manner. At the end
of the show, Beckmann’s dark side once again takes hold of the viewer with
his apocalyptic visions. Pandora’s Box lies open, and grey
smoke is rising up: the catastrophe is in the process of unfolding.
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