Max Beckmann: departure

Abstract

"For German painter Max Beckmann (1884–1950), travel was of fundamental existential significance. In the 1920s, he regularly traveled to the health resorts and palatial hotels on the Dutch, Italian and French coasts. His defamation as a 'degenerate' artist by the Nazi regime, however, forced him to retreat, first from Frankfurt to Berlin and subsequently into exile in Amsterdam. His eventual emigration to the United States in 1947 marked the culmination of a life in which the longing to travel was confusingly―and yet fruitfully―mingled with uprooting, dislocation and exile. Max Beckmann: Departure assembles an outstanding selection of artworks by the great painter, and also creates a dialogue with hitherto unseen objects and materials from the Max Beckmann Archive. The book explores Beckmann’s relationship to film and literature as a maker of images of aspirations and longing that resound with conflicting emotions of identity and home."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents

Introduction : Max Beckmann and the art of departing / Oliver Kase -- Departure / Oliver Kase, Christiane Zeiller -- A thread wound around nothing : getting away from ever close-by / Ulrike Draesner -- Departure from Rotterdam : the paintings set sail / Nina Peter -- Transit / Sarah Louisa Henn -- En route between times and places : Max Beckmann's "sense of being at home in the cosmos" and the dialectic of exile / Françoise Forster-Hahn -- Delayed departure to America / James H. Arthur -- The window / Oliver Kase -- On Max Beckmann's View of the Tiergarten with white globes / Josefine Berkholz -- A house looks through its windows (marginalia or notes on a picture frame) / Dževad Karahasan -- Max Beckmann : summertime at the sea / Sibylle Lewitscharoff -- The sea / Christiane Zeiller -- cloud translations / Uljana Wolf -- Keeping afloat, swimming free : Max Beckmann in the chalybeate spring of memories at Cap Martin / Florian Illies -- City hotel bar / Sarah Louisa Henn -- Portrait of an Argentinean / María Cecilia Barbettan -- Film / Christiane Zeiller -- Leaving your cares behind : a night at the pictures / Hanns Zischler -- Cosmos studio / Sarah Louisa Henn, Oliver Kase, Christiane Zeiller -- "Novo cento (Berlin) 1933" : Man in the dark / Barbara C. Buenger -- The art of Jong / Patrice Nganang -- Travels through landscapes worth protecting : the surfaces of Max Beckmann's paintings / Maike Grün -- Argonauts : arrival? / Christiane Zeiller.