Max Beckmann: Dream of Life
"Art serves understanding, not entertainment," reads one of Max Beckmann's dictums. Beckmann's oeuvre, widely acknowledged to be some of the most significant German art of the twentieth century, contains a wealth of existential and contemporary historical convictions and questions. This representative selection of some 60 figurative paintings done between 1917 and the artist's death in 1950 unfolds the entire panorama of his career, from violent works reflecting the shock of war to pieces from his later years in New York, from the Cubism and Expressionism of his youth to the Symbolism of his later age. "The Dream of Life" sheds new light on the development of Beckmann's techniques, ideas and central themes: cabaret, music, the world of the theater, dreams and reality, sensual settings and the role of the female muse, as well as his unusual use of romantic visual motifs in landscapes and urban contexts. The authors focus on conceptual aspects of Beckmann's work which have heretofore been neglected.
Format:Hardcover
Language:English
ISBN:3775716955
ISBN13:9783775716956
Release Date:June 2006
Publisher:Hatje Cantz
Length:176 Pages
Weight:2.78 lbs.
Dimensions:0.8" x 9.5" x 12.7"
Grade Range:Postsecondary and higher
Customer Reviews
1 rating
A new insight on a great artist
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 17 years ago
This book is the catalogue for an exhibition held at the Zentrum Klee in Bern, Switzerland, in 2006. The idea of the exhibition, as pointed out in the beginning of the book, was to confront Beckmann's art to Klee's (the museum's Klee holdings are the largest in the world).This idea is not present here, since the catalogue is entirely centered on Beckmann, leaving Klee out. It is a good survey of Beckmann's art, divided in several themes (Beckmann and music, Beckmann and the circus, Beckmann and women, Beckmann and nature...)and enables the reader to view some rarely seen aspects of the artist's oeuvre (I, for one, did not know he had painted still lives), as well as some of his celebrated self-portraits. One shortcoming, though: the quality of the illustrations could have been better.
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