SFX: a radio is turned on and music begins playing, as if it was in a woman’s private dressing room
NARRATOR:
We’re looking in on a private moment — a woman getting dressed, or maybe undressed. It’s such a quiet and inoffensive scene. But just before Max Beckmann painted it, he’d been branded a “degenerate” artist.
SFX: the sound of the radio being tuned to a different channel, to the sounds of Nazi Germany; militant music and an archival radio speech — Hitler heralding the rise of the Third Reich
NARRATOR:
During the 1930s, Beckmann made paintings that were often deeply critical of Hitler’s Germany.
SFX: the sound of Hitler’s speech rises, to applause
NARRATOR:
In 1937, the Nazis removed thousands of artworks from German museums, and staged a huge exhibition mocking modern art as “degenerate.”
Beckmann lost his university teaching post, and fled to Amsterdam. It was there, just a few months after he lost everything, that he created this painting.
SFX: radio returns to tranquil music, the sounds of the peaceful room in Amsterdam return
NARRATOR:
Let’s take a closer look. See those thick black outlines? All those jagged shapes? And the way so many elements are packed in this space, one on top of the other? Beckmann was helping to define a new, expressionistic style of painting that Hitler considered to be depraved and un-German. He delivered diatribes against these so-called “defective” visions.
See those red and white lilies fanning out across the painting? The flowers create a private space for the woman, protecting her from the intrusions of the outside world.
Beckmann lived the rest of his life in exile, but he never stopped painting. And his stints teaching here in the U.S. — including at Mills College in Oakland — influenced a new generation of American artists.
