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拍品專文
The majority of Max Beckmann’s some 300 prints were made between 1911 and 1925. His first, an etching of 1901, is a self-portrait. Reminiscent of Edvard Munch's print The Cry of 1895, it shows the seventeen-year-old art student open-mouthed and screaming. Beckmann was to continue to be involved with his own image throughout his artistic career (see also the drypoint Self-Portrait with Bowler of 1921; cat. no. 13).
Max Beckmann, best known for his mastery of the difficult drypoint technique, made only about fifteen woodcuts, all relatively late, in the 1920s. His independent work is difficult to discuss in the same breath with the work of other German Expressionists — Kirchner, Heckel, Schmidt-Rottluff, and Nolde — who are so closely identified with the woodcut. Those of Beckmann share the boldness and force of other early twentieth-century German wood- cuts, but the artist seems often to have been less involved than, for example, Kirchner or Nolde with the expressive uses to which the manner of execution — the actual cutting and gouging — or the texture of the wood plank itself could be put. As we see here, he sometimes did, like Kirchner, abandon the convention of the pictorial rectangle or border- line and let the image on the block define its own boundaries. (In a related manner, in Beckmann’s lithographs of the time, elements of the composition often project over the drawn borderline.)
The ample figures of Two Women (who appear to be prostitutes) are compressed into a rather shallow space with up tilted planes — a Cubist-inspired pictorial device that Beckmann employed in many of his compositions, creating a sense of unease or psychological tension. In addition, the fact that we view one woman from the front and the other from the back contributes to the image a feeling of naked exposure and voyeurism. As they joylessly enact their ritual of primping and getting dressed, a lute or mandolin that leans against the bed may convey a traditional allusion to music as symbolic of the fleeting nature of worldly pleasures.
Michael M. Floss, The Modern Art of the Print: Selections from the Collection of Lois and Michael Torf, p.54
Max Beckmann, best known for his mastery of the difficult drypoint technique, made only about fifteen woodcuts, all relatively late, in the 1920s. His independent work is difficult to discuss in the same breath with the work of other German Expressionists — Kirchner, Heckel, Schmidt-Rottluff, and Nolde — who are so closely identified with the woodcut. Those of Beckmann share the boldness and force of other early twentieth-century German wood- cuts, but the artist seems often to have been less involved than, for example, Kirchner or Nolde with the expressive uses to which the manner of execution — the actual cutting and gouging — or the texture of the wood plank itself could be put. As we see here, he sometimes did, like Kirchner, abandon the convention of the pictorial rectangle or border- line and let the image on the block define its own boundaries. (In a related manner, in Beckmann’s lithographs of the time, elements of the composition often project over the drawn borderline.)
The ample figures of Two Women (who appear to be prostitutes) are compressed into a rather shallow space with up tilted planes — a Cubist-inspired pictorial device that Beckmann employed in many of his compositions, creating a sense of unease or psychological tension. In addition, the fact that we view one woman from the front and the other from the back contributes to the image a feeling of naked exposure and voyeurism. As they joylessly enact their ritual of primping and getting dressed, a lute or mandolin that leans against the bed may convey a traditional allusion to music as symbolic of the fleeting nature of worldly pleasures.
Michael M. Floss, The Modern Art of the Print: Selections from the Collection of Lois and Michael Torf, p.54