Max Beckmann:
An Encounter with Expressionism

Carrie Robbins

 

As this exhibition shows, the German Expressionists did not walk a
single tightrope toward a single goal; rather, their approaches and
ideals varied, often significantly. Art critic Wilhelm Hausenstein
witnessed this lack of singularity in his 1919 essay, "Die Kunst in
diesem Augenblick" ("Art of this Moment"): "What is Expressionism? Who
is an Expressionist? The claim that no one is an Expressionist is
equally valid as the one that all are or perhaps some: for it is
uncertain what exactly Expressionism is" (qtd. in Long 281). Armed with
different utopian ideals, individual German artists stepped up onto
their own metaphorical tightropes attempting the seemingly impossible
feat of transforming society to match those ideals. And yet, as the
previous essays document, the hindsight of twenty-first-century viewers
complicates the movement and its ideals, even beyond the original
contradictions of those ideals. So with what can we walk away from this
exhibition? Because he articulated his artistic ideals in contrast to
the Expressionists, and yet was informed and influenced by these
artists, Max Beckmann offers a unique example through which to encounter
the German Expressionists, one that may be particularly useful and
thought provoking to a contemporary audience.

While often characterized as a German Expressionist, Max
Beckmann actively disagreed with the Expressionists' artistic agenda. As
a board member selecting entries for the 1910 Berlin Secession
exhibition, Beckmann was involved in that exhibition's "notorious"
exclusion of Expressionist artists, such as this exhibition's Erich
Heckel, Max Pechstein, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, as art historian
Barbara Copeland Buenger documents (110). In his published response to
Expressionist artist Franz Marc's essay, "Die neue Malerei" ("The New
Painting"), Beckmann attacked the abstract painting tendencies Marc
championed as being "feeble and overly aesthetic" in that they "fail[ed]
to distinguish between the idea of a wallpaper or poster and that of a
'picture'" ("Gedanken" qtd. in Buenger 116). Beckmann most explicitly
disagreed with the Expressionists' tendency toward abstraction. In his
response to Marc he wrote, "[t]here is only one thing that always
happens in good art. This is the conjunction of the artistic sensuality
with the artistic objectivity and actuality of the things to be
represented" ("Gedanken" qtd. in Buenger 116). Beckmann feared that the
"new art" was moving away from the "sachlich" or "objective" - qualities
Buenger has characterized as those of realism, fine handling or deep
space - and too much in the direction of applied art (7).

In addition to his derision of abstraction, Beckmann also
attacked Expressionism's inability to communicate with the contemporary
public. Beckmann considered Marc's celebration of the artist Paul
Gauguin illegitimate as Gauguin's "dependency on ancient, primitive
styles" proved that "he was not capable of extracting from our own
time...types that might be for us, the people of the present, what gods
and heroes were for those people then" ("Gedanken" qtd. in Buenger 117).
Thus, Beckmann argued that artists needed to engage reality in a
representational manner in their work as a means to reach the public in
their contemporary, troubled times.

While Beckmann remained steadfast in his imperative for realism,
his experience in the First World War influenced his philosophies on
art, as his writings demonstrate. As a letter written March 16, 1915,
and published soon thereafter reveals, Beckmann was thinking about new
ways of approaching art while maintaining his engagement with realism:
"I hope ultimately to become ever more simplified, ever more
concentrated in expression, but I will never - this much I know - give
up fullness, roundness, the vitally pulsating" ("Feldpostbriefe" qtd. in
Buenger 149). Furthermore, in a May 11, 1915, letter, he declared,
"[e]verything I did previously [to the war] was no more than an
apprenticeship. I'm still learning and growing" (Briefe qtd. in Buenger
169). And while he never subscribed to the Expressionist justification
for abstract art, after the war he did modify his own position (if not
admittedly) to invoke sentiments reminiscent of Expressionist
manifestoes. This shift included an understanding of art as an
expression of the inner self (see Labowitz). For example, his statement
for his first major show of prints in November 1917 maintained his quest
for realism but revealed a new attention to an "inner vision" ("Vorwort"
qtd. in Buenger 180). An emphasis on the interplay between the inner and
outer worlds continued throughout his later career and appeared in
Beckmann's so-called "Letters to a Woman Painter," a speech he delivered
in 1948 at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, and published soon
thereafter. Here, he instructed his audience on the appropriate balance
between realism and expressionism quite explicitly, stating:

Nothing is further from my mind than to suggest
to you that you thoughtlessly imitate nature. The impression nature
makes upon you in its every form must always become an expression of
your own joy and grief, and consequently in your formation of it, it
must contain that transformation that only then makes art a real
abstraction. But don't overstep the mark. Just as soon as you fail to be
careful you get tired, and though you still want to create, you will
slip off either into thoughtless imitation of nature, or into sterile
abstractions that will hardly reach the level of decent decorative art.
(qtd. in Buenger 317)

In addition to appearing in his writings, this shift in
Beckmann's artistic ideals is also evident through stylistic changes
that occurred between his pre-war and post-war work. Primarily a
painter, Beckmann took up the print media following the war, arguably as
a cost-efficient means in times of tremendous inflation or because he
desired a direct rawness reminiscent of the drawings and etchings he had
done during the war. He issued annual print series between 1918 and
1922. His pre-war paintings are schooled in what one could characterize
as an impressionistic realism, while his wartime prints and drawings
take on a more rough and stylized gesture. Though still
representational, this new distorted gesture leans toward abstraction
and it informed his post-war paintings and additional print series.
Beckmann distorted and exaggerated objects in order to re-present them
with a new awareness toward the post-war crisis of cities and their
inhabitants torn apart by disaster. He remained different from the
Expressionists in that he wanted to highlight the object rather than the
emotional reaction to it, but Beckmann was increasingly concerned with
art that could address humanity through social criticism. In his
"Schöpferische Konfession" ("Creative Credo") of 1918, he stated: "Right
now we have to get as close to the people as possible. It's the only
course of action that might give some purpose to our superfluous and
selfish existence-that we give people a picture of their fate" (qtd. in
Buenger 184). The call to reach the people only strengthened Beckmann's
conviction for realism. Although employing a stylized distortion, he
hoped that this distortion would heighten the social critique, but
remain recognizable, for he believed that the people could not empathize
if the images were not readable.

In a 1925 Mannheim exhibition, Beckmann was grouped with other
realists under the heading Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). This new
realism, a trend that included the work of George Grosz and Otto Dix,
enthusiastically encouraged observation of reality, but with a cynical
and dry humored critique. Beckmann's methods for engaging and distorting
reality in his art included compositions with an extreme foreshortening
of space and rough and stylized mark-making. These tools are readily
apparent in this exhibition's three prints from the series, Jahrmarkt
(The Annual Fair): Hinter den Kulissen (Behind the Scenes, Fig. 28), Der
grosse Mann (The Tall Man, Fig. 29), and Die Seiltänzer (The Tightrope
Walkers, Fig. 27). All of these prints incorporate Beckmann's
characteristic foreshortening of a space to compress all figures into a
single foreground plane. While the spaces represented remain
recognizable, he exaggerates the compression of three dimensions forcing
all elements of the pictures to demand the viewer's attention equally.
In Hinter den Kulissen, Beckmann gives the space a low ceiling that
appears to be pressing in on the oversized figures to convey the sense
of a confined and crowded backstage area. The table and floor planes
rise severely, demanding the back wall's interference before the
downward slope of the ceiling can meet the fast-approaching floor. The
only exits - a door on the left and a window on the right - are
blackened, and as such offer only an escape into the dark unknown.
Beckmann's severe mark-making endows the figures with a dirty, rough,
and crude quality. The hard diagonals used to shade the figures seem to
be cut into their bodies with too-precise razors. The single, thick
lines indicating floor and ceiling sweep unabashedly through the space
and cling to the figures, who remain caged by their directional force.
In Der grosse Mann, the tall isolated man on the stage is just as
readily noticed as the vertical of the amusement park ride or the
boat-like seats that swing from it, past the buildings that close off
any escape beyond the park, and into the ogling crowd that also demands
our attention. The effect is chaotic. And while busy, the isolation and
spectacle of the tall man contrast the loud, intrusive surroundings.

Beckmann's busy picture planes not only create a visually
interesting image, but also convey a social critique that is also
apparent in Die Gähnenden (The Yawners, Fig. 30) from the series
Gesichter (Faces, e.g., Cat. 8-10). In this print, Beckmann fills the
composition with open-mouthed, lazy faces, in order to create a sense of
crowded, inescapable boredom. The two main verticals that compress
inward from the right and left sides of the print act to trap the faces,
which are stacked atop one another, seeming to share the same plane.
Beckmann has made the yawners grotesque with his heavy-handed
articulation of the lower left face's fangs and the intrusion of a
probing finger into the upper right face's nostril. The socially awkward
contagion of the yawn seems symptomatic of the infectious boredom
possessed openly and unanimously by all faces present.

Beckmann's social critique of an unimpressed and perhaps
apathetic contemporary society is one interpretation that the Neue
Sachlichkeit artists hoped audiences would readily understand.
Beckmann's criticism often centered around the role of the artist within
his contemporary society. Visually, he often portrayed himself as a
performer: an acrobat or a tightrope walker, as in Die Seiltänzer (Fig.
27). With such imagery he indicated society's expectation that the
artist be equated with an entertainer. Beckman, thus, expressed his
continued frustration at what he saw as the artist's lack of status
within the society. In his 1927 critical remarks, "The Social Stance of
the Artist by the Black Tightrope Walker," he furthered this critique by
specifically casting himself as Nietzsche's tightrope walker in Thus
Spoke Zarathustra. In this text, which remained unpublished until 1984,
he ironically indicated the flawed dynamic between the artist and
society:

The budding genius must learn above all else to
respect money and power.... [H]e is a subservient member of society....
His demands can, of course, be taken under consideration only when
society's more essential needs for a family car and a vacation trip to
the Pyramids have been satisfied. The best thing an artist can do, of
course, is to die. (qtd. in Buenger 282-83)

Obviously frustrated by his society, and disillusioned and
sardonic in his post-war prints, one imagines that Beckmann only
expressed this disappointment because he had so much hope for humanity.

It was through his images that Beckmann felt he had the best
chance to connect with his contemporary society, and now perhaps our
own. In 1938, having fled Nazi Germany and speaking on his art at the
Exhibition of 20th Century German Art in London, Beckmann revealed some
of what have been called problems of Expressionism, despite his supposed
philosophical distance from that movement. Defining a deity as the space
that "surrounds us and in which we are ourselves contained," he claimed
that with his painting he tried to express "predestined necessity"
("Über meine Malerei" qtd. in Buenger 302). A word like "predestined"
may hint at why the theoretician Georg Lukàcs had asserted already in
1934 that Expressionism was inadvertently responsible for fascism.
Lukàcs despised what he perceived to be mystical irrationality in art.
He accused the Expressionists of

...internal contradiction, from the standpoint
of class basis and world outlook, [that] shows itself in the
Expressionist creative method in the contradiction that, while on the
one hand it has to lay claim to a total portrayal (simply on account of
the social and political position it adopted during the war and after),
on the other hand this creative method does not permit the portrayal of
a living and dynamic world. (qtd. in Long 315)

Did a sense of "predestin[y]" prevent Beckmann and the
Expressionists from "portray[ing]...a living and dynamic world"?
Beckmann attempted to break away from Expressionist abstraction, not
only to portray reality, but also to engage social critique. And yet in
London he may have fallen guilty to another of Lukàcs's accusations:
"emotive yet empty declamatory manifesto, the proclamation of sham
activism" (qtd. in Long 316). Perhaps Beckmann, too, as Lukàcs declared
of the Expressionists, engaged in "mock battle" (qtd. in Long 315).
Delivering his speech at an exhibition of his paintings, but from the
safety of exile, Beckmann is vulnerable to the Lukàcsian critique that
he furthered "sham activism" with irrational sentiments of
predestination.

While this reader of Beckmann is haunted by a word such as
"destiny," because it suggests the passivity that allowed for the rise
and success of National Socialism and its deadly policies, I still find
comfort in Beckmann's hopeful reassurance during our own wartime crisis.
Our crisis began with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and
continues with our military retaliation in Afghanistan. In another time
of world crisis, Beckmann spoke these words:

Have confidence in objects. Do not let yourself
be intimidated by the horror of the world. Everything is ordered and
right and must fulfill its destiny in order to obtain perfection. Seek
this path and you will attain from your own self ever deeper perception
of eternal beauty of creation; you will attain increasing release from
all that which now seems to you sad and terrible. ("Über meine Malerei"
qtd. in Buenger 307)

While Beckmann adds "perfection" to the pool of disturbing words
- disturbing because the Nazis sought to perfect the human race - he
would encourage us to meet these chaotic times with steadfast and
careful observation of our realities, our routines. Readers of his
wartime letters notice that even among exploding bombs and reminders of
death, Max Beckmann realized that living is daily life and its details.
Thus, he sought reassurance in observable and palpable reality, in the
object as the means to inform and perhaps transform society. But, as we
take this lesson from Beckmann, we must also be aware of the
complications in his statements, as well as the contradictions of the
other Expressionists, and not remake their mistakes. Perhaps as we walk
away from this exhibition, we can take with us that which Beckmann hoped
would be gained from his work, that art challenges us to see reality
differently. Whether or not the intended audience was reached by these
prints, the power of the art object is that it remains. Beckmann's
images now inform us within a new context of world crisis. His prints,
although de-contextualized, resonate with us; and similarly his words,
although flawed, still inspire. Within the maze of Expressionism,
riddled with its contradictions, we recognize the bigger picture, that
some complications cannot be completely resolved. In our own lives,
perhaps we can do what Beckmann instructed his Missouri audience in 1948
to do: "...find and follow the good way. It is very hard with its
pitfalls left and right. I know that. We are all tightrope walkers. With
them it is the same as with artists, and so with all humanity"
("Letters" qtd. in Buenger 317).