Status Updates From Max Beckmann (Modern Master...

On the presence of a 'ladder' in many of his paintings: In the Sought German dialect the word 'Staffelei' signifies both an artist's easel and a ladder. The ladder has often served B as a symbol of anguish, longing, and fulfilment, just as a canvas is the artist's proving ground.

The left panel of the triptych The Argonauts, originally called 'The Artist and his Model', shows the painter practically attacking his canvas; the man corresponds to Vincent Van Gogh in Paul Gaughin's portrait of his painter friend at work.

..the remarkable shallowness of Beckmann's space - the narrow stage upon which the crowded action of his pictures almos always takes place, before a blank abrupt backdrop -- was caused by the fact that he equated space with death.

Aboard the SS Westerdam, Germany's foremost painter met Germany's leading author, but the encounter had few rewards for either. Thomas Mann eagerly showed Beckmann a series of woodcuts by the Belgian artist Frans Masereel, for which he was writing a preface. Beckmann crisply commented in his diary: 'Quite nice for a fourteen year old.'

Quappi in Blue and Grey. 1944.

The cellist Frederick Zimmermann pointed out in a lecture delivered to the Max Beckmann society in 1962 that the painter knew the sound and pitch of every musical instrument and painted each in order to evoke a specific response.

Hans von Marées, Hesperides.1885.

The triptych had been revived by the 19C artist Hans von Marées... subsequently the triptych form was used in Germany by Max Klinger, Franz von Stuck, and Fritz von Uhde. Emil Nolde painted his highly Expressionistic triptych of 'Mary of Egypt' in 1912. Outside Germany, Edvard Munch and Félix Vallotton executed three-panelled compositions, and even Gaughin's Where Do We Come From. is conceptually a triptych.

In contrast to the Cubists, who would transform a woman with a guitar into a still life, Beckmann endowed his still ilifes with human qualities.

Beckmann's familiarity with world literature was extensive, and he frequently would recommend specific reading to his students. This might be work by Gustave Flaubert and Stendhal; Charles Baudelaire, E.T.A. Hoffmann, and Jean Pau; or Friedrich Hölderlin, James Joyce, and John Dos Passos. Beckmann might cite a book like Dos Passos 'Manhattan Transfer' to illustrate his concept of the simultaneity of events.

The Synagogue. 1919.




Destroyed during Kristallnacht.

My heart goes out to the four great painters of masculine mysticism: Mälesskircher, Grünewald, Bruegel and Van Gogh. Beckmann dixit in a catalogue for his graphic work exhibition in Berlin, 1917.

Sinking of the Titanic, 1912-13. The St Louis Art Museum.

The greatest danger that threatens mankind is collectivisation Beckmann dixit 1938.