Met Museum: Max Beckmann in New York

The title of the current exhibit at the Met Museum, Max Beckmann in New York, is somewhat misleading since the works shown are actually drawn from virtually all periods of the artist's career.  In fact, the show seems to have no clear theme, or at least none that I could find.  It's a retrospective. of course, and yet not nearly so comprehensive as one would have wished to see.  Many of the artist's most important works are present, but there's no way of telling from their haphazard arrangement the manner in which Beckmann developed his distinctive style over the course of his lifetime.  Strolling through the galleries, the viewer has the unfortunate impression that the works assembled were those most readily available.

The critical influence on Beckmann's art was his experience in the German medical corps in World War I.  It's difficult for us in the twenty-first century to imagine the trauma that the sight of so many mangled bodies must have inflicted on the psyche of a sensitive young artist.  As the art historian Ferdinand Schmidt wrote in 1919:

"His [Beckmann's] earlier work seems to have come to an abrupt end.  Those who knew and admired the Beckmann of 1913 may well be appalled by so radical an alteration in style.  There can hardly be any other example in recent German art of such a fundamental change in an artist's approach."

Though Beckmann steadfastly refused to be labeled an Expressionist, it's impossible not to see that movement's influence on his subsequent painting.  Like his compatriots Otto Dix and George Grosz, Beckmann's view of reality as depicted in his work grew increasingly nightmarish and even surrealistic. The events of his own postwar life could only have confirmed this inclination.  He went from being during the Weimar period a successful artist, recipient of numerous awards, and an esteemed teacher at the Frankfurt Fine Arts Academy to life as a reviled exile once the Nazis came to power.  

Nothing so damaged the course of German art in the last century as Hitler's rampage against modernism as no more than "degenerate art."  Along with many other prominent German artists, Beckmann found his work confiscated from museums and galleries only to be included in the infamous Entartete Kunst exhibit held in Munich in 1937, the same year Beckmann and his wife fled Germany for the supposed safety of the Netherlands.  Actually, the artist was forced to spend ten years in Amsterdam, most of them as a virtual prisoner once the Nazi occupation began.  It was here that Beckmann painted what was to me the most interesting work on display, Bird's Hell (1938), a rendering of tortured souls that clearly reveals the influence of Hieronymus Bosch.

Even after Beckmann arrived in America, he was unable to rid himself of the paranoia that had enveloped him in Europe.  This can be seen in such paintings as Café Interior with Mirror-Play (1949), a hellish representation of the stylish bar at New York's St. Regis Hotel, Falling Man (1950), and above all The Town (City Night) (1950) in which an innocent young female ventures out after dark only to be set upon by New York's nighttime predators.  

There are other important works at the exhibit that should not be missed.  These include several iconic self-portraits done at various times in the artist's life; two of his triptychs, Departure (1932-1935) and Beginning (1949); a number of portraits of muses and other women that Beckmann invariably portrays, except in the case of his wife Quappi, as heavyset temptresses fairly oozing sensuality; and even some bizarre "domestic" scenes, such as The Bark (1926) and Family Picture (1920).

Apparently, Beckmann's primary connection with the Met Museum was his death.  He was actually on his way to the museum to view an installation of his work when he dropped dead of a heart attack on Central Park West two days after Christmas in 1950.  

The exhibit continues through February 20, 2017.