Of the artists who reacted most profoundly to the traumatic horrors of the First World War, Otto Dix is among the most memorable, not to say shocking. Although he could at times paint with a lyrical sweetness that embodies an affectionate love of friends and family, his depictions of the crippled and deformed survivors of the fighting leave nothing to the imagination. Likewise, he saw the prostitutes of the German cities as part of the same devastated society, presenting the female body as ugly and distorted while at the same time desired by the isolated and emotionally lonely.
He is also a vivid recorder of the fertile yet brittle culture of the Weimar Republic in the 1920s. He was born to a prosperous working-class family in the northern province of Thuringia and trained as an artist in the then beautiful city of Dresden. He was proud of his background and his work proclaims an emphatic earthiness. In the central panel of this triptych he half-satirises, half-glamourises fashionable Weimar society, with its passion for American jazz, and predilection for drugs and skimpy female attire.
The two wings with their concentration on low life are not as explicitly sordid as many of his images, which are not always for everyday viewing. The experience of the war – not to mention its equally horrific sequel in 1939-45 – is a stage of world history we are perhaps all too anxious to forget about, unless in the form of romantic military exploits. Dix, who lived through it all, makes sure that we don’t. We are still living with its consequences, on the foundations it laid. And it’s none too certain that it won’t be repeated before long. The past should colour the present, and the testimony of artists viscerally engaged with it as Dix was can help us to reimagine it for our long-term benefit.
Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life
