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

Max Beckmann

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226041352 ISBN 13: 9780226041353

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1997

Synopsis

Max Beckmann was labeled a "degenerate artist" by the Nazis and chose exile. His artistic production encompassed the figural themes of his early works to the provocatively blunt portraiture, critical urban views, and richly layered symbolic works for which he is now recognized. Although he was a prolific writer, his written work has never before been collected and translated into English. Beckmann is known for the depth, pungency, and tremendous sensuous force of his works, but little is known about his personal life. He carefully distinguished between his public and private writings; he made long pronouncements about art in private and produced strongly personal public statements. This text maps out Beckmann's life and draws attention to the occasions on or for which he produced his writings, to the importance writing had for him as a form of expression, and to both the contemporary and personal references of his ideas and images. This collection reverberates with Beckmann's experience of life as he moved from the first years of his career in Paris and Berlin to the eastern and western fronts of World War I, the rich cultural and artistic world of postwar Frankfurt, exile in Amsterdam, and final years in the United States. Beckmann's early diaries, war letters, formal statements, interviews, and plays present a different view of this most worldly and involved cultural figure.

About this title

From the Back Cover

One of the most important German artists of the twentieth century, Max Beckmann was labeled a "degenerate artist" by the Nazis and chose exile. His artistic production encompassed the realism and figural themes of his early works to the provocatively blunt portraiture, critical urban views, and richly layered symbolic works for which he is now universally recognized. Although he was a prolific writer, his written work has never before been collected and translated into English. Beckmann is known for the depth, pungency, and tremendous sensuous force of his works; only in the last twenty years have we come to learn more about his personal life. Self-Portrait in Words maps out Beckmann's life and draws attention to the occasions on or for which he produced his writings, to the importance writing had for him as a form of expression, and to both the contemporary and personal references of his ideas and images.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226041352
• ISBN 13: 9780226041353
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 444
• Editor: Barbara Copeland Buenger