Volume 49, Number 20 · December 19, 2002
The Circus of Max Beckmann
By Ian Buruma
Max Beckmann: Un Peintre dans l'histoire
an exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, September 10, 2002–January 6, 2003; the Tate Modern,London, February 13–May 5, 2003;and the Museum of Modern Art,Queens, June 25–September 30, 2003
Beckmann
Catalog of the exhibition edited by Didier Ottinger
Centre Pompidou, 409 pp., 56! (paper)
Max Beckmann was born in 1884 in Leipzig, and died on December 27, 1950, in New York City. He was, I think, the greatest painter to emerge from the brief but extraordinary artistic big bang of Weimar Germany. If he is less famous than some more sensational figures, it is because he was never a joiner. Beckmann went his own way, always. This is what George Grosz, a fellow New York émigré, wrote after his death: 'Beckmannmaxe was a kind of hermit, the Hermann Hesse of painting, German and heavy, unapproachable, with the personality of a paperweight, utterly lacking in humor.'[2]
Review, 4425 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |