Art Work of the Day: Max Beckmann: Bird's Hell.
17. And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God;
18. That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great.
19. And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army.
Revelations 19: 17-19
One of the most powerful indictments of national Socialism in art must surely be Max Beckmann's ferocious and nightmarish painting, Bird's Hell.
Max Beckmann (February 12, 1884 – December 28, 1950) was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is commonly classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement. Major exhibitions, including large retrospectives at the Städtische Kunsthalle Mannheim (1928) and in Basle and Zurich (1930) together with numerous publications, showed the high esteem in which Beckmann was held.
Beckmann's traumatic experiences of World War I, in which he volunteered as a medical orderly, resulted in a dramatic transformation of his style from a post-Romantic academically "realism" to an "expressionistic" distortion of both figure and space, reflecting his altered vision of himself and humanity. He is especially known for the self-portraits painted throughout his life, their number and intensity rivaled only by Rembrandt and Picasso.
Beckmann enjoyed great success and official honors during the Weimar Republic. In 1925 he was selected to teach a master class at the Städelschule Academy of Fine Art in Frankfurt. In 1927 he received the Honorary Empire Prize for German Art and the Gold Medal of the City of Düsseldorf; the National Gallery in Berlin acquired his painting The Bark and, in 1928, purchased his Self-Portrait in Tuxedo.
Beckmann's fortunes changed with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, whose dislike of Modern Art quickly led to its suppression by the state. In 1933, the Nazi government called Beckmann a "cultural Bolshevik" and dismissed him from his teaching position at the Art School in Frankfurt. In 1937 more than 500 of his works were confiscated from German museums, and several of these works were put on display in the notorious Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich. The day after Hitler's infamous radio speech about degenerate art in 1937, Beckmann left Germany with his second wife, Quappi. For ten years, he lived in poverty in self-imposed exile in Amsterdam, failing in his desperate attempts to obtain a visa for the US.
Bird's Hell was among the first of the paintings produced by Beckmann during his exile in Amsterdam. Not since his graphic attacks in The Night...
... painted in the early twenties in response to the chaos, violence, and political unrest in Germany immediately after WWI, had Beckmann resorted to such direct, undisguised social criticism. Birds' Hell is Beckmann's J'accuse.
The brilliantly colored painting presents a scene of horror and torture. A fettered man has his back cut open by a monstrous bird with a great knife.
To the left, a crowd of naked people... (the "unwashed masses"?) gather beneath a fiery red archway and obediently raise their arms in a Nazi salute while an armed guard... another avian monstrosity... awaits them.
One cannot help but think of Hieronymus Bosch great birds from his painting, The Garden of Earthly Delights... awaiting the call to feast upon "the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains..."
Next to Beckmann's bird-guard a black and golden eagle... the symbol of Prussian militarism... hoards a nest of gold... as the capitalist monopolies which, under the false pretext of patriotism, came to the aid of Hitler and his supporters.
At the center of the painting a horrific fertility figure... der "Mutterland" bursts forth from a great egg like some Kafkaesque Jack-in-the-Box, and immediately shoots forth the salute of "Heil Hitler!"
To the right, before another crimson archway, a series of golden circular forms suggest horns blaring forth... or perhaps great phonograph/radio loudspeakers... extorting the people to the call of war. Even the clergy who joined forces with the Nazis-especially the Deutsche Christen of Reichstischof Muller-are symbolized by the black-frocked, bespectacled bird just below the loudspeaker funnels. All these forces are united in one vast, orgiastic demonstration of power and violence.
The simple still-life in the foreground may represent the modest pleasures of life that were threatened with extinction under the Nazis: the joys of a humble repast, dreams of a peaceful and relaxing vacation on sandy beach watching the sunset... even the very idea of painting itself which had become so intertwined with the still-life in the 20th century. The lone candle burns suggesting uncertain hope beyond these dark days after the setting sun.
Beckmann's paintings were quite often crammed to the point of bursting... like the horror vacui of medieval sculpture...
In Bird's Hell, this formal element is especially effective in suggesting the hellish chaos of the medieval images of the Last Judgment:
Like Matisse or Bonnard, Beckmann was one of the great colorists of the 20th century. His brilliant hues, surrounded by anxious lines of bituminous black often evoke the beauty of medieval stained glass:
Like the brilliant-hued stained glass windows and Renaissance paintings of images of torture, horror, demons, and monsters...
... the contrast between the unabashed beauty of Beckmann's color and the sensuality of his handling of paint seduces the viewer at the same time as he or she is repulsed by a recognition of all the ugly goings on. The result is far more unsettling than an unconditionally "ugly" image.