Max Beckmann

Max Beckmann (February 12, 1884 – December 28, 1950) was a German painter and print-maker. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement. In the 1920s Beckmann was temporarily and wrongly associated with German New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit).

Quotes

Beckmann, 1909: 'Kreuzigung / crucifixion'; quote of Beckmann: 'My heart beats more for a rougher, more ordinary, more vulgar art that does not live in a poetic, fairy-tale dream but admits the fearful, the common, the magnificent'

1900s - 1920s

• My heart beats more for a rougher, more ordinary, more vulgar art that does not live in a poetic, fairy-tale dream but admits the fearful, the common, the magnificent, the ordinary, the banal grotesque in life. An art that can always be directly present to us when life is at its most real.. [ on the same day he noted:] ..Martin thinks there will be a war. Russia England France against Germany. We agreed that it would be no bad thing for our rather demoralized present-day civilization if everyone's instincts and drives were to be harnessed to one cause..
  • Beckmann's Diary, 9 January, 1909, in Leben in Berlin: Tagebuch, 1908-1909, ed. Hans Kinkel; R. Piper & Co., Munich and Zurich, 1983, pp. 22-23; as quoted in 'Portfolios', Alexander Dückers; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 99

• The laws of art are eternal and don't change at all, as the moral laws don't change in human beings. [arguing with Franz Marc who demanded in 'Der Blaue Reiter' circa 1912 a new modern art, in relation to its own - changing - time].
  • as quoted in the exhibition, 'Expressionisten, die Avantgarde in Deutschland 1905 - 1920', catalog Nationalgalerie Berlin, DDR, 1986, p. 109

• Oh I wish that I could paint again. Paint is an instrument without which I cannot survive for any length of time. Whenever I even think of gray, green and white, I am overcome with quivers of lust. Then I wish that this war would end and that I might paint again.
  • Quote from Beckmann's letter to his first wife Minna, from the front, first World war, 1915; as quoted in Max Beckmann, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 14
  • Quote of Max Beckmann, one from a series of letters he wrote to his wife Minna Beckmann-Tube, being medic soldier at the front of World War 1.

• I have never, God or whatever knows, prostrated myself to be famous, but I would meander through all the sewers of the world, through all degradation and humiliations, in order to paint. I have to do this. Until the last drop every vision that exists in my being must be purged; then it will be a pleasure for me to be rid of this damned torture
  • letter to his first wife Minna, from the front, 1915; as quoted in Max Beckmann, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 5

• [it is] amusing all the same, how the peacetime life we cursed and groaned about now elevates itself with iron logic to the status of paradise..
  • letter of April 1915; in: Briefe im Kriege, pp. 33 (March 28, 1915), 64 (May 21, 1915); as quoted in 'Portfolios', Alexander Dückers; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 110

• I have such a passion for painting! I am continually working at form. In actual drawing and in my head, and during my sleep. Sometimes I think I shall go mad, this painful, sensual pleasures tires and torments me so much. Everything else vanishes, time and space, and I think of nothing but how to paint the head of the resurrected Christ.. .Or how shall I paint Minkchen [his wife Minna] now, with her knees drawn up and her head leaning on her hand against the yellow wall with her rose, or the sparkling light in the dazzling whiteness of the anti-aircraft shell-bursts in the leaden, sun drenched sky...
  • letter to his first wife Minna, from the front, 11 May, 1915; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 213

• Yesterday we came across a cemetery that had been completely destroyed by shellfire. The graves had been blown up, and the coffins lay about in the most uncomfortable positions. The shells had unceremoniously exposed their distinguished occupants to the light of day, and bones, hair, and bits of clothing could be seen through cracks in the burst-open coffins.
  • letter to his first wife Minna, from the front, 1915; as quoted in Max Beckmann, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 14

• The trenches wound in meandering lines and white faces peered from dark dugouts – a lot of men were still preparing the positions, and everywhere among them there were graves. Where they sat, beside their dugouts, even between the sandbags, crosses stuck out. Corpses jammed in among them. It sounds like fiction – one man was frying potatoes on a grave next to his dugout. The existence of life here had already become a paradoxical joke.
  • a letter to his first wife Minna, from the front, 21 May, 1915; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 213

• ..[war] in itself is one of the manifestations of life, like disease, love, and lust. And just as I follow fear, disease, lust, love, and hate to their utmost limits, well, now I am trying war. It is all life, wonderfully various and rich in inspiration.
  • Briefe im Kriege May 1915, p. 67; as quoted in 'Portfolios', Alexander Dückers; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 79

• The editor of this catalog asked me to make a statement about my work. I don't have much to write:
  - Be a child of your age.
  - Be naturalistic against your own ego.
  - Be matter-of- fact toward your inner visions
  - My love is dedicated to the four great masters of masculine mysticism: Mäleskirchener ([church-painters / muralists, Grünewald, Breughel [both famous painters in the late Middle Ages, ed.] and Van Gogh.
  • a catalog-text for his first major graphic show, November 1917; as quoted in Max Beckmann, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 14

• To me the most important thing [in a picture] is roundness captured in height and breadth. Roundness in the plane, depth in the feeling of the plane.
  • Quote from Schopferische Konfession (Creative credo) of 1918; first published in 'Tribune der Kunst und Zeit', no. 13 (1920): 66; for an English translation, see Victor H. Miesel, ed. Voices of German Expressionism, (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1970); as quoted in 'Portfolios', Alexander Dückers; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 101

1930s

• We're continually poring over plans, and the decision is difficult, but it's definitely coming soon. The idea with Barr is not bad and might convince me to take your advice, if B. really does get involved.
  • In a letter from Amsterdam 15 February 1937, to Hans Swarzenski in Princeton, the Max Beckmann Archive, Christian Lenz; as quoted on: arts in exile
  • In February 1937, his last hopes of a life in Germany had clearly faded, as he wrote to Hanns Swarzenski in Princeton on the 15th of the month. This quote refers to an invitation from Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and to the idea of emigrating to the USA, to escape Nazi-threat.

• I want to stay here [Amsterdam] for now, then maybe move on to Paris later on. For the interim, Amsterdam is not bad.
  • In a letter on 4 August 1937 from Amsterdam, to writer and collector Stephan Lackner; as quoted on artists in exile

• What is important to me in my work is the identity that is hidden behind so-called reality. I search for a bridge from the given present tot the invisible, rather as a famous cabalist once said, 'If you wish to grasp the invisible, penetrate as deeply as possible into the visible'.
  • In his public speech 'On my painting', for the exhibition 'Twentieth-Century German Art', London, 21 July 1938; as quoted in Max Beckmann, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 77

• Put the picture away or, preferably, send it back to me, dear Valentin. If people cannot understand it is based on their inner engagement with these matters, then there is no point in showing the thing at all.
  • In a letter to his art-dealer Curt Valentin, Amsterdam, 11 February 1938; as quoted in Max Beckmann, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 52

• 'Departure' [also the title of a famous triptych painting of Max Beckmann], yes departure from the illusion of life toward the essential things that wait behind appearance.. .We must insist that Departure is not bound to a political trend, but is symbolic for all times.
  • In a letter to his art dealer Curt Valentin, Amsterdam, 11 February 1938; as quoted in Max Beckmann – On my Painting in the preface, Mayen Beckmann; Tate Publishing London, 2003

• Politics is a subordinate matter; its form of appearance constantly changes depending on the needs of the masses, the same way cocottes adjust to the needs of men by transforming and masking themselves. Because of that it is not fundamental. That is about what endures, what is unique, what is in the stream of illusions – what is eliminated from the workings of the shadows.
  • In a letter to Stephan Lackner, Amsterdam, 29 January 1938; as quoted in Max Beckmann – On my Painting, in the preface, Mayen Beckmann; Tate Publishing London, 2003

• I am working here [Amsterdam] on my last big triptych, which will be a tremendous story, and which gives me a more intense life and exhilaration. My God, life is worth living!
  • In a letter to Stephan Lackner, Amsterdam, 1939; as quoted in Max Beckmann, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 5

On my Painting (1938)

Quotes from: republished text of Beckmann's public speech during the exhibition 'Twentieth-Century German Art' in London, 21 July 1938; Max Beckmann – On my Painting, Tate Publishing London, 2003

• My aim is always to get hold of the magic of reality and to transfer this reality in painting – to make the invisible visible through reality.. .What helps me most in this task is the penetration of space. Height, width and depth are the three phenomena which I must transfer into one plane to form the abstract surface of the picture, and thus to protect myself from the infinity of space. My figures come and go, suggested by fortune or misfortune. I try to fix them divested of their apparent accidental quality.
  • p. 12

• Space and space again, is the infinite deity which surrounds us and in which we are ourselves contained.
  • p. 12

• It is not the subject which matters but the translation of the subject into the abstraction of the surface by means of painting. Therefore I hardly need to abstract things, for each object is unreal enough already, so unreal that I can only make it real by means of painting.
  • pp. 12-13

• All things come to me in black and white like virtue and crime. Yes, black and white are the two elements which concern me. It is my fortune, or misfortune, that I can see neither all in black nor all in white.. .I cannot help realizing both, for only in the two, only in black and white, can I see God as a unity creating again and again a great and eternally changing terrestrial drama.
  • pp. 13-14

• Everything intellectual and transcendent is joined together in painting by the uninterrupted labour of the eyes. Each shade of a flower, a face, a tree, a fruit, a sea, a mountain, is noted eagerly by the intensity of the senses to which is added, in a way of which we are not conscious, the work of the mind, and in the end the strength or weakness of the soul.. .It is the strength of soul which forces the mind to constant exercise to widen its conception of space. Something of this is perhaps contained in my pictures.
  • p. 14

• One thing is sure – we have to transform the three-dimensional world of objects into the two-dimensional world of the canvas.. .To transform three into two dimensions is for me an experience full of magic in which I glimpse for a moment that fourth dimension which my whole being is seeking.
  • p. 16

• Imagination is perhaps the most decisive characteristic of mankind. My dream is the imagination of space – to change the optical impression of the world of objects by a transcendental arithmetic progression of the inner being. That is the precept. In principal any alteration of the object is allowed which has a sufficiently strong creative power behind it. Whether such alteration causes excitement or boredom in the spectator is for you to decide.
  • p. 16

• The individual representation of the object, treated sympathetically or anti-pathetically, is highly necessary and is an enrichment to the world in form. The elimination of the human relationship causes the vacuum which makes all of us suffer in various degrees – an individual alteration of the details of the object represented is necessary in order to display on the canvas the whole physicals reality.
  • pp. 17-18

• Painting is a very difficult thing. It absorbs the whole man, body and soul – thus I have passed blindly many things which belong to the real and political life. I assume, though, that there are two worlds: the world of spiritual life and the world of political reality. Both are manifestations of life which may sometimes coincide but are very different in principle. I must leave it to you [the audience] to decide which is the more important.
  • p. 18

• Colour, as the strange and magnificent expression of the inscrutable spectrum of Eternity, is beautiful and important to me as a painter; I use it to enrich the canvas and to probe more deeply into the object. Colour also decided, to a certain extent, my spiritual outlook, but it is subordinated to life, and above all, to the treatment of form. Too much emphasis on colour at the expense of form and space would make a double manifestation of itself on the canvas, and this would verge on craft work.
  • pp. 18-19

• My first informed impression, and what I would like to achieve, I can perhaps only realize when I am impelled as in a vision. One of my figures, perhaps one from the Temptation, sang his strange song to me one night – ..We are playing hide-and-seek, we are playing hide-and-seek across a thousand seas, we gods.. ..when the skies are red in the middle of the night, when the skies are red at night. You cannot see us, you cannot see us but you are ourselves.. ..that is what makes us laugh so gaily.. .Stars are our eyes and nebulae our beards.. ..we have people's souls for our hearts. We hide ourselves and you cannot see us, which is just what we want.
  • p. 19

• One of my problems is to find the Ego, which has only one form and is immortal – to find it in animals and men, in the heaven and in the hell which together form the world in which we live.

• Often, very often, I am alone. My studio in Amsterdam, [Beckmann lived and worked in the heart of Amsterdam during World War 2.] an enormous old tobacco storeroom is again filled in my imagination with figures from the old days and from the new, like an ocean moved by storm and sun and always present in my thoughts. Then shapes become beings and seem comprehensible to me in the great void and uncertainty of the space which I call god.

• All important things in art since Ur of the Chaldea's, since Tel Halaf and Crete, have always originated from the deepest feeling about the mystery of Being. Self-realization is the urge of all objective spirits. It is this Ego for which I am searching in my life and in my art. Art is creative for the sake of realization, not for amusement, for transfiguration, not for the sake of play. It is the quest of our Ego that drives us along the eternal and never-ending journey we must all make.

• As a painter, cursed or blessed with a terrible and vital sensuousness, I must look for wisdom with my eyes. I repeat, with my eyes, for nothing could be more ridiculous or irrelevant than a 'philosophical conception' painted purely intellectually without the terrible fury of the senses grasping each visible form of beauty and ugliness.

• It is, of course, a luxury to create art and, on top of this, to insist on expressing one's own artistic opinion. Nothing is more luxurious than this. It is a game and a good game, at least for me; one of the few games which make life, difficult and depressing as it is sometimes, a little more interesting.

• The Ego is the great veiled mystery of the world.. .I believe in it and in its eternal, immutable form. Its path is, in some strange and peculiar manner, our path. And for this reason I am immersed in the phenomenon of the Individual, the so-called whole Individual, and I try in every way to explain and present it. What are you? What am I? Those are the questions that constantly persecute and torment me and perhaps also play some part in my art.

• And then I awoke and yet continued to dream… painting constantly appeared to me as the one and only possible achievement. I thought of my grand old friend Henri Rousseau [French Primitive painter, died in 1910] that Homer in the porter's lodge whose prehistoric dreams have sometimes brought me near the gods. I saluted him in my dream. Near him I saw William Blake, noble emanation of English genius.. .'Have confidence in your objects,' he said, 'do not let yourself be intimidated by the horror of the world. Everything is ordered and correct and must fulfill its destiny in order to attain perfection. Seek this path'.. .I awoke and found myself in Holland in the midst of boundless world turmoil. But my belief in the final release and absolution of all things, whether they please or torment, was newly strengthened. Peacefully I laid my head among the pillows... to sleep, and dream, again.

1940s

• If one perceives of it all – the entire War or even life as a whole – as a scene in the theater of 'infinity', many things are much easier to bear.
  • Beckmann's Diary, 12 September 1940, Amsterdam; as quoted on: 'Arts in exile'

• Today I wanted to die of weakness and melancholy again.
  • Beckman's Diary, 31 March 1943, Amsterdam; as cited on: 'Arts in exile'

• Afternoon with Q. [Quappi, his second wife] on foot, looking for butter and coals – in vain.
  • Beckman's Diary, 1 June 1943, Amsterdam; as cited on: 'Arts in exile'

• Even our own cadaver-bones shall not hinder us from standing our ground until the very last, proud and tired in the face of the black wall that surrounds us.
  • Beckman's Diary, 10 October 1943, Amsterdam; as cited on: 'Arts in exile'

• Very worried and nerveux for 1944. Life is dark – as is death. Close 1943.
  • Beckman's Diary, 31 December 1943, Amsterdam; as cited on: 'Arts in exile'

• Saw the English [pilots] coming from the sea in huge bands like the bristling hair of Zeus Jupiter. Heard all destroyed in Frankfurt. Sad... (12 April 1944)
  • notes in his diary, 1944, Amsterdam; as quoted on: 'Arts in exile'

• At 10 o'clock a Dutch girl came by Lütjens: ! PEACE!

Beckmann's Diary, 4 May 1945, Amsterdam; as cited on: 'Arts in exile'

• Well - not quite yet - green police [the Germans] still driving around with machine guns, etc. Nevertheless big peace party with warning by Eisenhower. - Walked around in the city [Amsterdam], much drunkenness..
  • Beckmann's Diary in early May 1945, Amsterdam; as cited on: 'Arts in exile'

• Thick rumors of imminent peace are in the air.. .Big spectacle with six or seven British tanks. In the afternoon, they played war once more at the Palaisplein [near Dam square in Amsterdam center] and at the Rokin [street where Beckmann lived for 8 years, as 'entartete' German artist under German occupation; The Netherlands was liberated by the Allies, 5 May 1945].
  • In Max Beckmann, de:Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 80

• The world is rather shot to pieces [end of World War II - 1945], but the spectators climb out of their caves and pretend to have again become normal and customary humans who ask each other's pardon instead of eating one another or sucking each other's blood. The entertaining folly of war evaporates, distinguished boredom sits down again on the dignified old overstuffed chairs.. .May I report about myself that I have had a truly grotesque time, brim-full with work, Nazi persecutions, bombs, hunger, and again and again work – in spite of everything [a. o. using his bed sheets as canvas for the new paintings]
  • letter to de:Stephan Lackner, Amsterdam, 27 August 1945, as quoted in Max Beckmann, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, pp. 80 + 86

• Is there to be no getting away from this loathsome vegetative physicality?.. .Utter contempt for the lewd enticements that always lure us back into life's clutches. And when, half-parched, we seek to quench our thirst, the gods laugh us to scorn.
  • Beckmann's Diary-notes, 4 July, 1946, p. 156; as cited in 'Portfolios', Alexander Dückers; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 113
  • Beckmann himself castigated the folly of supposing that sexual gratification leads to fulfillment.

• Arrival at break of dawn. Veiled giants stood sleepily in wet mist on Manhattan.. .Yes, New York is really grandiose. But it stinks of burned fat, just like the sacrificial meal of the slain enemies among the savages. But nevertheless – crazy, crazy, crazy! Babylon is a kindergarten compared with this, and the tower of Babel here becomes the mass erection of a monstrous and senseless will. I am sympathetic.
  • Beckmann's diary-notes, New York, 8 and 9 September 1947; as quoted in Max Beckmann, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 89

• And the evening of the big Vanity Fair arrived.. . Perre Rathbone and innumerable people received me in enormous halls. The reporter shot pictures and Mrs. Beckmann [Quappi, his wife] grinned – - o-la-La.. ..The whole story is a monumental caprice of my situation in Germany before the Nazi's.
  • IBeckmann's diary-notes, Saint Louis, 6 October 1947; as quoted in Max Beckmann, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 89

• Learn by heart the forms to be found in nature, so that you can use them like the notes in a musical composition. That is what these forms are for. Nature is a marvelous chaos, and it is our job and our duty to bring order into that chaos and – to perfect it.
  • Beckmann's lecture 'Drei Briefe an eine Malerin' ('Three letters to a Woman-painter'), New York and Boston, Spring 1948; as cited in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 214

• A human face, a hand, a woman's breast or a manly body, an expression of conflicting joy and pain, the infinite ocean, savage crags, the melancholy speech of black trees against the snow, the fierce power of spring blossoms and the heavy lethargy of a hot summer noon when our old friend Pan is asleep and the ghost of noon are murmuring – all this is enough to make us forget the sorrows of the world, or to give them form. In any case the determination to give form to things brings with it part of the solution for which you are seeking. The path is hard and the goal can never be reached – but it is a path.
  • Beckmann's lecture 'Drei Briefe an eine Malerin' ('Three letters to a Woman-painter'), New York and Boston, Spring 1948; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 214

• The metaphysics of substance. The strange feeling which comes over us when we sense: this is skin – this is bone – all in a single vision that is completely unearthly. The dreaminess of our existence mixed at the same time with the indescribably sweet illusion of reality.
  • Beckmann's sketchbook - probably referring to his last triptych painting 'The Argonauts', he painted in 1950, the year Beckmann died

Quotes about Max Beckmann

• He would had always seen the world as 'chaos' and 'grief' (the mad and violent world he tried to control in paintings like 'The Destruction of Messina' [Beckmann's early painting in 1909] and who relied on his art 'to order this chaos.. ..to give it form' now found himself overwhelmed by formlessness and horror, helpless. [Beckmann was a medic in the first World War] ..After less than a year and a half, he had broken down in mind and body and was invalided out of service [in 1915].
  • Quote of Sister Wendy Beckett, in 'I am quite pleased that there is war', Max Beckmann and the Self, Prestel, Pegasus Library, 2003, p. 26

• For much of his life, he [Beckmann] was torn between consciousness of the Transcendent and doubt about the very meaning of humanity. He felt that 'there was still some sort of force which wants to be eternal but which is still deeply convinced of the pointlessness of it all'.
  • Quote of Sister Wendy Beckett, in 'I opened my eyes and found I was in Holland..', Max Beckmann and the Self, Prestel, Pegasus Library, 2003, p. 72

• But Beckmann sees no purpose in the suffering he shows; there is no glory for anybody, no compensation.. .Beckmann blames human nature as such, and there seems to be no physical escape from this overwhelming self-accusation. Victims and aggressors alike are cornered. There is no exit.
  • Quote of de:Stephan Lackner; as quoted on Wikipedia: 'The Night'

• We live in such a hell, only we are not conscious of it; we have shifted all of the torment and doubt of our situation onto the artist's conscience; as prophet and soothsayer of the times, he carries our burden; he expresses the meaning and insanity of the everyday, which we hold hidden in our hearts.
  • Quote of P. F. Schmidt, in 'Führerpersonlichkeiten auf dem Gebiete der deutschen Graphik', in 'Jahrbuch der jungen Kunst', ed. Georg Biermann; Klinkhardt & Biermann, Leipzig, 1922, pp. 841 + 844; as cited in 'The Revival of Printmaking in Germany', I. K. Rigby; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 45
  • Beckmann created his portfolio 'Die Holle' [Hell] during his March 1919 stay in Berlin; P. F. Schmidt is commenting on 'Die Holle'

External links

• MaxBeckmann.com, Homage site.
• 64 images of art-works by Max Beckmann]
• complete text of Beckmann's 'Letter to a woman-painter', 1948
• Max Beckmann School including information in English