Max Beckmann and the Self (Pegasus Library)
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,History & Criticism
Max Beckmann and the Self (Pegasus Library) Details
Sister Wendy Beckett, the presenter of three major television series' on art, examines Max Beckmann's self-portraiture, shedding new light on the way the traumatic events in the artist's life were reflected in his painting. She observes "he painted himself as if thereby to find himself. If he could make visible...these lineaments, that expression, that visual record of his experience, then he might come to a deeper experience of what he was." By tracing the changing moods of Beckmann's painting throughout his life, Sister Wendy plots a series of peaks and troughs in the artist's feeling of self-worth. She correlates these directly with events in his life, and reveals a number of hidden selfportraits. Much of Beckmann's work was dramatically influenced by the two world wars, and Sister Wendy argues that it was only the artist's last works, in America, that demonstrated he had finally reached fulfillment. Read more
Reviews
Max Beckmann's paintings are famously difficult ("hermetic" is the term of art), so much so that interpretations of the same work can differ wildly from one "expert" to another. In fact, it's commonly said that he never intended that some, at least, of his paintings could be decoded -- so make of them what you will.Beckett takes a different approach, identifying and then tracing a common theme through his art, across the whole of Beckmann's creative life. The theme is described as the artist's lifelong quest to identify his own "self," on the assumption that such an entity must be there to be found, elusive as it would always remain. Excerpts from Beckmann's diaries and other writings provide evidence for this obsession, and it in turn makes for interesting, coherent, and plausible interpretations of works that are otherwise merely mysterious. If you are looking for a path into the Beckmann forest, this short, elegantly written, and nicely illustrated book might just be the best place to start.