Page 68 - Studio International - July August 1973

profile' and restrainedly scornful of some of the accessible to a wider public. Those artists to spiritual excused them from all consideration
more far-fetched flights of art-historical whom it has become a totem of unapproachable of the niceties of composition and technique.
source-hunting, writing in a generally dimensions may feel that another attempt to Beckmann had set his face against the
straightforward style, with occasional lapses interpret the myth assails the most basic avant garde.
into the schoolmasterly 'Let us see how ...' criteria of its making, but since Duchamp But then he changed. Instead of huge,
genre. Two quibbles : the Artist inspired by his himself has co-operated on many such writings, allegorical neo-Baroque machines (like
Muse is one of the standard conventions of initiating the whole process by producing the Resurrection, 1909) he began producing
Western art, with many more prototypes than Green Box in 1934 — a collection of 93 facsimiles symbolic compositions which, although
Nicolson implies by citing only three specific of material produced by him while working on undecipherable in detail, were clearly
examples; and, is 855 or 858 the date of the Large Glass idea in 1911-13 — the most allegories on the German social condition. The
Nadar's photograph of Courbet as an Assyrian respectable precedent of all has been set. He manner in which they were painted changed too.
relief ? Presumably restricted by the format, must, anyway, have accepted by the time of his A hard, artificial light now revealed everything
the book loses by its concentration on Context death in 1968 that, in spite of his retreat into in sharp contour and shallow relief where before
at the expense of Art. The Studio is treated as an chess, he had himself undoubtedly become one figures and landscape had dissolved in feathery
iconographical exercise, and dismissed as a of the arch-totem figures of the twentieth brush strokes and the colours of a mixed
painting by worrying judgments like that on century. blancmange. The forms were now distorted
Courbet's figures — 'stood about like skittles in Golding relates the Large Glass and its towards the angular where before they had been
the spaces allotted to them'. Is it really a failed creator to Cubism, Dada and Surrealism, but soft and billowy. The change is discernible in
attempt at conventional perspective ? At any shows conclusively that for Duchamp 'His drawings as early as 1912, but not until 198 and
rate, the artist's 'courage and impertinence' are own art was neither one of affirmation nor specifically with a painting called The Night was'
given their due to mitigate criticism of the rejection, and his iconoclasm was one of the metamorphosis complete. Beckmann had
technical quality of the painting itself. The sublimation and gentleness' — an appropriately now joined the avant garde. He had learned
book gives no new insights into the innate diffuse reflection on the hypnotic image of the something from Expressionism, had adopted
quality of this extraordinary painting, but is Glass. q some aspects of Cubism and was working in a
essentially concerned with historical perspective ROSEMARY MAIN manner which at the time seemed to be close to
and well-marshalled fact, nicely larded with that of Grosz and Dix. These two painters and
some entertaining and highly individual Beckmann were, after 1920, seen together in the
views. Unravelled popular imagination as the most important
It is now half a century — a golden Max Beckmann by F. W. Fischer, 96 pp., representatives of the Neue Sachlichkeit, of the
anniversary — since the completion of Duchamp's 21 colour plates. Phaidon. L8. New Objectivity, which was the valid post-war
Large Glass and, because of its continuing place alternative to Expressionism.
as perhaps the single most influential icon for Beckmann is a curious case. He is one of the That, at least, is how it seemed at the time,
twentieth-century art, any approach must be best known of the German painters of his and although Beckmann lost many admirers,
tempered both by an awareness of its profound generation and one of the least understood. who believed he had become a traitor to the only
importance and of Duchamp's derisive attitude Indeed, one explanation for the number of valid tradition, he gained many more who were
to those adopting such a reverent pose. This, books written about him and for the willingness pleased to welcome such a celebrated painter to
John Golding has achieved with a perceptive of the museum men to stage massive exhibitions the ranks of the avant garde. But Beckmann's
intelligence that will give anyone hovering of his work is that scholars delight in attempting new style was at bottom very like his old. The
nervously at the edge of the Glass the courage to to unravel the meaning of the master's opaque, sharpness of the Neue Sachlichkeit simply
embark on its labyrinthine complexities, 'in deadly earnest and highly personal symbolism. served to give the old subject-matter the
which', as John Golding writes in his None has entirely succeeded and it may be that appearance of something new. So many of his
Introduction, 'it is anyway more stimulating to the exercise is futile. Beckmann's paintings are post-1908 paintings (The Sinking of the
be lost'. endowed with non-literary qualities in sufficient Titanic, Deluge) have typically expressionist
Equipped with a remarkable intellect that was measure for them to impress without benefit of subjects, prophetic as they were of the coming
fuelled with energy and curiosity, Duchamp interpretative apparatus and his stylistic collapse of Europe; and work produced after the
produced the Large Glass between 1912 and development is so unusual that he will always war for all its considered clarity and formal
1923 by manipulating and totally controlling remain one of the most interesting, if not the balance continues to explore expressionist
au extraordinarily catholic range of material, most important, German artists of his themes : the circus, the dramatic self-portrait,
welding it together into a synthesis of great generation. the landscape as mirror of the painter's
creative originality that succeeds in being both Although not born with a silver mahlstick in emotions. Beckmann remained an allegorical
an enigmatic paradox in its programme and a his mouth, Beckmann had it made. His student painter. He continued to believe that the artist
very beautiful object. Chronophotographs, work won so many admirers that he felt secure was primarily a maker of myths.
symbolist literature, alchemy, cubist enough at 17 to leave the Weimar Academy and Friedhelm Fischer, the author of this book,
conventions coerced into his wholly individual three years later his painting Young Men By the published another on Beckmann in 1972 when
vision — these have all been examined by Sea so impressed the super-patron Graf Kessler this one was first published in German. It is
Golding, together with detailed analyses of the that he bought it for the Weimar Museum. At 20 called Max Beckmann Symbol und Weltbild
vital precursors of and preliminary studies for Beckmann was not only proving to the German (Symbol and World Picture). There the pictures
the Glass. Much of this information has provinces that he could outdo El Greco and are interpreted with great ingenuity and
appeared before, either in the monolithic Delacroix in the scope, size and message of his imagination and Dr Fischer possibly felt that
Arturo Schwarz volume, or in the 1960s huge machines but had also become a to concentrate on interpretation again here would
articles and catalogues cited in the useful self-appointed defender of the timeless values be redundant. That is a blessing, for we are
Bibliography, but the interpretation of this mass of painting against the ravages of the gathering spared such tortuous exercises and are allowed
of perceived fact combined with Duchamp's hordes of expressionists. On a famous occasion to concentrate on the development and on the
own hermetic or deliberately simplistic he entered the lists on behalf of reason and more formal qualities of the major paintings.
pronouncements is an invaluable addition to tradition to take on Franz Marc and the other The form of the book is curious inasmuch as
those few books which make works such as the dewy-eyed Munich transcendentalists who Dr Fischer attempts to relate Beckman's
Large Glass visually and mentally more thought that a belief in the universal and biography and stylistic development exclusively

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