1919, Max Beckmann, Self-Portrait with Champagne Glass -- Stadel Museum (Frankfurt)
From the museum label: In his numerous self-portraits, Beckmann repeatedly slipped into other roles. Here, he depicts himself as an elegant dandy in a dinner jacket at a nightclub bar, probably the one at the Frankfurter Hof. His poorly-looking frame fits only barely, rather twisted into the narrow image space. In the background, a grotesque figure is laughing, with its grimace reflecting like a threatening echo on the left. As a level-headed bourgeois and detached observer, Beckmann holds up a mirror to the society of the interwar period, a time that was marked by enormous upheavals.
1919, Max Beckmann, Self-Portrait with Champagne Glass -- Stadel Museum (Frankfurt)
From the museum label: In his numerous self-portraits, Beckmann repeatedly slipped into other roles. Here, he depicts himself as an elegant dandy in a dinner jacket at a nightclub bar, probably the one at the Frankfurter Hof. His poorly-looking frame fits only barely, rather twisted into the narrow image space. In the background, a grotesque figure is laughing, with its grimace reflecting like a threatening echo on the left. As a level-headed bourgeois and detached observer, Beckmann holds up a mirror to the society of the interwar period, a time that was marked by enormous upheavals.