Max Beckmann

Description

Max Beckmann was among the greatest painters of the 20th century, yet no retrospective of his work has been mounted in the art capitals of New York, London, and Paris in over 30 years. Perhaps the lapse of attention has to do with the importance of abstraction in 20th-century art, and Beckmann's work is always figurative, simultaneously muscular and enigmatic and has enormous and unsettling power.
Beckmann began his career as a naturalist and Symbolist in the period before World War I. After the war he developed a unique pictorial style that mixed expressionist color and gesture, mythological and mystical allegory, and the harsh new objectivity of his portrayal of modern life throughout the Nazi reign of terror. A prolific artist in painting, drawing, and printmaking--as well as a powerful sculptor--Beckmann created mysterious images and dense tableaux of unparalleled intensity and complexity during an odyssey that took him from his native Germany to Paris, Amsterdam, St. Louis, and New York.
A new examination of Beckmann's role and reputation during the first half of the 20th century has been eagerly awaited. Making use of new scholarship and previously unavailable research materials, this book sheds light on Beckmann's work and his influence on and interactions with the artists of his day. Essays include discussions of Beckmann's Frankfurt cityscapes, his pictures from Italy, his triptychs, his group portraits, and his relationship with cultural politics in the 1920s and 1930s; texts and interviews by artists Leon Golub and Ellsworth Kelly; curator Robert Storr on "The Beckmann Effect"; and artist William Kentridge on Beckmann's Death. This sumptous volume is published on the occasion of the retrospective exhibition mounted jointly by the Tate Modern, Centre Georges Pompidou, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. It is the first comprehensive exhibition of Beckmann's work to be seen in the United States since 1984, and the first in New York since 1964.
The greatest mystery of all is reality. --Max Beckmann
I hardly need to abstract things, for each object is unreal enough already, so unreal that I can only make it real by means of painting. --Max Beckmann

Edited by Sean Rainbird.
Essays by Robert Storr, Didier Ottinger, Jill Lloyd, Anette Kruszynski, Susanne Bieber, Nina Peter, William Kentridge, Charles W. Haxthausen, Leon Golub, Ellsworth Kelly, and Barbara Buenger.

Hardcover, 9.7 x 11 in., 304 pages , 140 color & 70 b/w illustrations

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Customer Reviews

A comprehsive coverage of the artist and his work
Max Beckmann edited by Sean Rainbird, published by Tate Publishing in conjunction with the Centre Georges Pompidou and the MoMA. ISBN 0870702416 clothbound, ISBN 0870702426 Paperbound. 296pp, 11.5"x9.75" (29x25cm). - Check these details as Amazon sometimes get their cross-listings for other editions wrong.

The dust-jacket flap describes this as "the first comprehensive English language catalogue on the artist published since ... 1984. It contains new research by German, British and American scholars." The book comprises thirteen essays, including several by practising artists; it concludes with an extensive and detailed Chronology, a Select Bibliography, List of Works and an Index.

The many essays make fascinating reading, some deal with more general subjects or a period in the Beckmann's development including the difficult times of his exile; others discuss perhaps a specific work. There are extensive Notes for each essay. It illustrated profusely throughout in full colour (174 illustrations), including many of the drawings; the images are of a good size with many full page or larger. In addition there are 40 black and white illustrations which include examples of the work of other artists, a few of Beckmann's drawings, and many photographs of the artist. The illustrations run with the text and appear on or close to the page upon which they are discussed, this rule appears at time to be followed so closely that some works appear more than once.

It is a very well produced book; the illustrations are of high quality and reveal the texture of the paint surface and the colours are rich and bold. It is a worthy book providing a broad coverage of the artist, his work and his life.

2008-04-14 (UK) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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comprehensive but....
intelligent text and many illustrations, sadly however, none are in color. Beckmann deserves more.

2007-08-26 (Philadelphia, PA) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 3

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The definitive Beckmann monography
This book is the catalogue for the largest Beckmann exhibition ever held, in 2003,at the Centre Pompidou, the Tate Gallery and the Moma. All the masterpieces of this great artist are illustrated and explained, following a clear chronology and putting them in the historical and social context in which they were created. High-quality texts (especially the analysis of Beckmann's influence on contemporary artists like P.Guston, or the recurrent presence and meaning of the mirror in his paintings) make this an indispensable work. Highly recommended.

2007-04-26 (Florianopolis, Brazil and Paris, France) | Helpful Votes: 9 | Rating: 5

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Max Beckmann and the Self (Pegasus Library)

Description

As original as he was prolific, German artist Max Beckmann produced nearly a thousand works in a career that spanned two world wars. This beautifully produced volume uses Beckmann’s own words as an introduction to the artist’s creative expression and his unwavering search for the self.

Beckmann struggled throughout his life to define his identity through his paintings. He started out as an ambitious and self-confident young artist, went through a horrific stint as a medical orderly in World War I, and then became an exile in Holland and the United States. Through her careful analyses of more than fifty works, Sister Wendy illuminates Beckmann’s use of symbolism as well as the strong thematic strains of his paintings and triptychs. The artist’s bold use of color and line are in brilliant evidence in numerous full-color reproductions, and an extensive biography as well as several photographs offer additional insight into this strong creative presence who never failed to challenge himself or his audience with his art.

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Max Beckmann: Exile in Amsterdam

Description

Between 1937 and 1947, while he was in exile in Amsterdam, the German-born painter Max Beckmann (1884-1950) made approximately a third of the work he would create in his lifetime. When he moved on, it was to accept an appointment as a professor at Washington University in St. Louis. Before that peacetime respite, he countered Europe's threatening instability with intense concentration. Max Beckmann in Amsterdam opens with the last work he completed in Germany, a triptych titled Versuchung (Temptation), and dedicates the balance of its pages to the paintings and drawings from his years in Holland. These widely varied responses to his immediate historical and biographical situation show horror of developments in Nazi Germany and constant physical and mental tension created by his wartime surroundings. As a body of work, Beckmann's Amsterdam portfolio is not only of great importance in understanding his motivations and methods, and in itself a record of the most productive phase in his life, but also a critical examination of a crucial moment in twentieth-century history.

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Customer Reviews

Great Book, Great Condition!
Book arrived in a decent time frame, it was in excellent condition, and the book really had some amazing visual references and in depth information. Thanks!

2009-10-02 | Tabs (Alabama) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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AN ARTIST HITLER DID NOT LIKE
Max Beckmann was among the most talented artists working in the first half of the Twentieth Century. An ambulance driver for Germany in the first World War, invalidated out of service after suffering a nervous breakdown, he spent the second World War as a German self-exile living in Amsterdam, where he was constantly under threat of being conscripted despite his age. Partly as a consequence of these nerve-wracking experiences, partly because Hitler did not approve of his modern form of art, partly because he was an associate, friend and object of patronage of persons of Jewish descent whom he was always in danger of joining in the death camps, he was frequently locked in the grip of depression or deep anxiety. However, being an artist of the first rank, he transformed these experiences into paintings and works on paper of the most profound and memorable sort.
This fine book covers the period of his life spent in Amsterdam to which he and his wife moved after he had been listed among Germany's Degenerate Artists. Thanks to his friends and associates, as well as his son, a German military physician, he was able to avoid the worst of what might have happened to him while producing some of his very finest work. With the aid of excellent reproductions and penetrating analysis by the authors in the light of his personal correspondence and diaries, we are able to understand better the often difficult pictures to which his wide-ranging reading and thought gave birth. Where no reasonably sound hypothesis can be found for an aspect of a picture, the authors have the courage simply to say that they do not apprehend what he might be getting at.
All in all, this stacks up as one of the must have monographs for those interested in European art of the Twentieth Century as well as anyone interested in the impact of Europe's catastrophe upon an independent-minded artist who knew that there was no escape from its consequences.

2007-10-13 | irv (Freehold, NJ, USA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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Ten crucial years in the life of Beckmann
This catalogue accompanies an exhibition held in Amsterdam and Munich, centered on the ten years the artist spent in exile in Amsterdam (1937-1947), after being banned by the nazi regime in Germany. Many of his best works (triptychs, self-portraits, portraits of his wife) were painted during that period.

Each work is wonderfully illustrated and an enlightening explanation is placed next to every illustration. This book is of great help in that it succeeds in deciphering some of Beckmann's most difficult paintings, as for example, the thriptych entitled "the Temptation of Saint Anthony", giving the roots and the sources that inspired the artist.

Also very well described in the essays in the beginning of the book, is the changing attitude of the artist in the face of the historical events that were tragically changing his life and his country at the time.

The book ends with photographs of all the places frequented by Beckmann during his stay in Amsterdam (his various homes, the grocery store where he used to shop...) and a very clear chronology placing Beckmann's life next to the historical events he went through.

Highly recommended.

2007-08-20 (Florianopolis, Brazil and Paris, France) | Helpful Votes: 4 | Rating: 5

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Self-Portrait in Words: Collected Writings and Statements, 1903-1950

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German expressionist painter Max Beckmann, whose paintings were influenced by horrific scenes he witnessed as a medical orderly in World War I, was eventually labeled a "degenerate artist" by the Nazis and forced to flee his homeland. In this collection of essays, speeches, and letters, Beckmann emerges as a deeply intelligent and sensitive observer of the world. Of particular note are writings from the battlefields of 1915, and some of his instructional comments to students from his time spent teaching in the United States in the late 1940s.

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Max Beckmann On My Painting

Description

Max Beckmann (1884-1950) is widely regarded as one of the most important figurative painters of the last 100 years, and On My Painting is one of the key texts essential for understanding his work. Composed in 1938, it was read by Beckmann at the opening of the 20th-Century German Art exhibition in London, a riposte to the Degenerate Art exhibition that Hitler held to pillory the work of Beckmann and other figures of the avant-garde. In his lecture, Beckmann outlined his artistic as well as his moral and spiritual vision, providing a unique insight into his complex work.

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Customer Reviews

Beckmann's theory of painting
If you are a fan of Beckmann this a must read.Beckmann goes counter to todays direction,with its empahsis on formal qualities: minimalism. He stresses content and that means subject matter.Beckmann's formal attributes come out of traditional German art.He tells you why ,he paints.He didn't have a difficult art life: his work in Germany found early acceptance.His work as an ambulance driver in WW1 scarred his vision of the world. After a period of recovery from mental problems due to the war. He led a stable life. He came to the U.S after the Nazis were seeking him in the Netherlands. He taught at the Brooklyn Museum school and Washington University in St. Louis Mo.He tried to compete with Picasso. He kept a keen eye on Pablo's work.Max still enjoys a big reputation.He never lost his visual German accent!

2006-12-30 | klee fan (Glenview, Il. United States) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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Max Beckmann Prints: From the Museum of Modern Art

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