Page 49 - Studio International - December 1974

indulges in the 'creative act'. Our sentiment. They are an orgy of
moral code just does not allow for prettiness, charm and complexity. I am
work to be enjoyed with that much deeply suspicious of his mixture of
enthusiasm and intensity, and it is hard virtuosity, sophistication and naivety,
for us to stomach such overt self- and yet I came away from the
indulgence as Dine's, especially when it exhibition utterly seduced and smiling
is displayed, like this, naively and with pleasure.
without a trace of guilt or shame. Sarah Kent
Looking at Dine's work is like
watching a child innocently playing
with his genitals, quite unaware that Max Beckmann at Marlborough Fine
his act is socially unacceptable. And Art, London, November;
for Dine painting and drawing perform Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Erich
a similar function to the child's Heckel at Achim Moeller, London,
exploration of himself and his world. November
For each they are a way of There is all the self-confidence of youth
comprehending and grappling with his in Beckmann's Self portrait Laughing
environment and of developing his of 1910. The artist looks directly out
sense of identity through building up a into the world, the grin is not quite
repertoire of familiar objects and places. Jim Dine cocky. He is handsome, he is charming
Each learns to possess objects by Self portrait 1971 and he is also successful. He is holding
(One of a portfolio of 9)
absorbing them into his store of mental a newspaper and it is easy to believe
Drypoint, 17½ x 74 in.
images and, like the cave-man, to control that he has just read a glowing review
them by capturing their likeness. of his own work there. Perhaps
As a boy in Cincinnati Dine often Beckmann had done just that. Certainly
helped in his grandfather's and father's Bathroom) and they, in turn, stand in by 1910, when Beckmann was 26 years
hardware stores, and the objects which for him, metaphorically presenting him of age, critics did little but acclaim him
he internalised from those surroundings in his public role. In fact he rarely as the Great Hope of German painting.
such as saws, chisels, hammers, and portrays his own features, though there He had come to Berlin from Weimar in
screwdrivers now form a major part of were several self-portraits in this 1905 with the reputation of having been
his visual imagery. He reproduces them exhibition, but prefers to symbolise his the most brilliant student the Academy
over and over again, as a child recites presence through objects. His Self- in that city had ever seen. His ambition
familiar rhymes to himself, depicting portraits consist of an empty bathrobe knew no bounds and from the first he
them with loving precision as objects of which, like the liveries of Duchamp's insisted on painting large-scale works of
great beauty and mystery, imbued with bachelors, stands unsupported, full yet large-scale subjects: The Destruction of
the significance of fierce childhood empty, and represents the artist Messina, The Battle of the Amazons,
(Top) Max Beckmann
desires, fears, and obsessions — relaxing at home as a private individual. The Sinking of the Titanic, all in a
Self portrait laughing 1910
memories of sensuality, aggression, He calls these a 'chronicle of my vigorous energetic style which owes
Oil on canvas, 31½ x 27½ in.
impotence (his tools are often bent and experience', but they resemble ghosts much to Corinth. Beckmann's future (Bottom) Max Beckmann
floppy) and power. Even the sexuality in their emptiness, and as such, remind was assured. Self portrait with horn 1938
of these images (many of his phallic us more of his absence than his presence. Twenty-eight years later in Oil on canvas, 43½ x 39¾ in.
tools are endowed with luxurious Dine definitely gives the impression Selfportrait with Horn the self-
growths of pubic hair) seems to stem that he is 'just passing through', and confidence has gone. Although still alone which persuaded the English in
from childhood voyeurism and sexual his images are elusive like the traces of dramatising himself, although still 1938 to stage an exhibition of modern
longing rather than the lustings of a actions or fragments of thought which convinced of his masculine beauty German art at the New Burlington
mature adult. As he explained 'it's have not yet gelled into statements, Beckmann seems hesitant, withdrawn. Galleries in London, an exhibition
more like titillation — no orgasms. It's and yet somehow, at the same time, he The horn looks like an ear-trumpet which the Marlborough show partly
nothing to do with pornography — seems to be totally physically present which makes the artist, dressed in a celebrates. For the English never
they're not sexual at all — rather asexual'. engrossed in his act of making. kind of dressing-gown, look like a could believe that Germans made good
In his visual repertoire Dine only Dine's self-indulgence has an anal convalescent. This painting belongs to painters and a lecture by Beckmann,
includes those objects which he feels quality. He is utterly absorbed in the an extensive series of self-portraits who came to London specially to give
have become his possessions through sheer joy of manipulating gooey stuff which, beginning around 1918, reveals it during the life of the exhibition, did
that process of interiorisation. 'I deal and thereby overcoming his repressions. the artist's profound doubts about nothing to make them change their
exclusively with my subconscious' he 'I have always gone from one pole to himself and the society in which he minds. Indeed, Beckmann's reputation
once said 'and the references I saw as a the other of scatology — too clean to lives. He appears increasingly as the in England as the most gifted German
child and the things I have accumulated too dirty .... this compulsion along loner, as the man of the big city at painter of the inter-war period and one
in the back of my head .... I hesitate with the fear that the paintings will go night whose clothes give off the smell of the most talented artists working
to use anything English (he lived here away are reasons for making the things of Birnenschnapps and stale cigarette anywhere in Europe at that time is very
for some years from 1967) because I do', he said. This joy in dirt is best smoke. recent indeed, helped obviously by the
they are not mine. I don't see how. I summed up by a happening that Dine Much had happened to Beckmann large Beckmann retrospective at the
could possess them — it would take me staged in New York in 1960 called and to Germany in the 28 years Tate in 1965.
another thirty years.' Some of his titles Smiling Workman in which he posed as separating Selfportrait Laughing and Whether or not you resist the
imply that this process of possession a happy artist slurping paint from three Selfportrait with Horn. The Hope of temptation to see the political situation
through absorption is total, so that the buckets onto a painting on which he German art experienced the First reflected in Beckmann's work and
objects become a part of the structural wrote 'I like what I am doing'. He then World War as a medical orderly and had whether or not you attempt to unravel
makeup of his own body. A series of suddenly poured the bucket of red paint a nervous breakdown as a result. He the highly personal symbolism he
hairy objects such as scissors, pincers, (actually tomato juice) over himself and emerged from it all a changed man who developed, his paintings, especailly
and brushes of 1972, for example, is leapt right through the painting. One abandoned his previously successful those of the 1918-33 period, do give
called Thirty Bones of My Body. could hardly ask for a more graphic style and started all over again. He now off the sickly perfume of their time,
Dine often labels his objects, writing analogy to Freud's theory that painting reacted to the increasingly troubled do contribute to our picture of the
their names alongside their images, as if is an adult substitute for shit-smearing, times by developing a highly personal Weimar Republic less directly perhaps
by doing so, he can make their capture and Dine himself has expressed his symbolism. The loner, the man at the but as surely as do the paintings and
complete. And like a cave-man, he also delight in that art form! Many of Dine's all-night bar had his head full of Kings, drawings of Grosz and Dix with whom
uses images to come to terms with a images reiterate this overlap of different Queens and Circus performers. It was, Beckmann exhibited in 1925 at the
new threat — when his son, Nicholas human actions — of eating, defecating, at least, a means of escape from the famous Neue Sachlichkeit show in
was born in 1965, Dine announced the sex and creating. He compares eating pressing problems beyond his front Mannheim.
birth of his new rival with a lithograph to drawing 'Drawing is like eating a door. In 1938 Beckmann was living in The Marlborough once had a name
of the child's penis and testicles! good meal', and his erotic vegetables of Amsterdam, hounded there by the for organising large, impressively-
A second group of recurring and 1969 — phallic aubergines and Nazi art policy which had declared his researched exhibitions of German
autobiographical images consists of the cucumbers with carrots, melons, and art degenerate and had forbidden him artists little-known in Britain. Beckmann
tools of Dine's own trade in adulthood pimentos doubling as vaginas — clearly from exhibiting. is, of course, anything but little-known,
— things such as palettes, paints, brushes, relate eating to sex, and his repertory There is always a temptation with but the Marlborough has managed a
colour-charts, pencils and etching tools of tools refer not only to making, but Beckmann and his German showing of his work as impressive as
that form his standard equipment as an also to making it. contemporaries to search in their work anything from the old days and the
artist. He also seems to identify bodily Dine is a master of the visual and for reflections of the political situation. catalogue also reaches the highest
with this paraphernalia — one of his verbal pun and of nuance and whimsy. There is also a temptation, and standards set by this gallery. As I said,
favourite colours is 'flesh', (a word His luscious and perverse images are especially in Germany, to think highly the show is partly a celebration of
which recurs in his titles such as Little painted in cosmetic colours with a of any artist whom the Nazis banned. Beckmann's role in the 1938 London
Flesh Tie, Flesh Palette and Flesh thick overlay of sugary but brittle Certainly it was politics and politics exhibition: several of the paintings