1942, Max Beckmann, Actors -- Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge)
From the museum label: In the early 1930s, in the face of escalating threats by nationalist critics to practitioners of the German avant-garde, Beckmann increasingly turned to allegorical and mythical subjects and began to work in an ambitious triptych format. The triptych, or painting in three parts, references the tradition of religious painting in the West, but also, as a result of its sheer size, makes a claim for public recognition. Painted during World War II while Beckmann was in exile in Amsterdam, Actors depicts a theater rehearsal. The construction of space challenges illusionistic perspective, as evident in the disjointed stage occupied both above and below, and jolts viewers out of passive spectatorship. For Beckmann, theater was a direct metaphor for existence in wartime. Several figures here are often identified as the artist’s fellow émigrés, and the self-sacrificing king at center as Beckmann in younger years. Tired of the “lousy, uncreative efforts” of the “unknown stage directors” orchestrating wailing sirens or bombing campaigns, Beckmann designed his own “stage sets” of complex, layered meanings.
1942, Max Beckmann, Actors -- Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge)
From the museum label: In the early 1930s, in the face of escalating threats by nationalist critics to practitioners of the German avant-garde, Beckmann increasingly turned to allegorical and mythical subjects and began to work in an ambitious triptych format. The triptych, or painting in three parts, references the tradition of religious painting in the West, but also, as a result of its sheer size, makes a claim for public recognition. Painted during World War II while Beckmann was in exile in Amsterdam, Actors depicts a theater rehearsal. The construction of space challenges illusionistic perspective, as evident in the disjointed stage occupied both above and below, and jolts viewers out of passive spectatorship. For Beckmann, theater was a direct metaphor for existence in wartime. Several figures here are often identified as the artist’s fellow émigrés, and the self-sacrificing king at center as Beckmann in younger years. Tired of the “lousy, uncreative efforts” of the “unknown stage directors” orchestrating wailing sirens or bombing campaigns, Beckmann designed his own “stage sets” of complex, layered meanings.