Kunsthalle Mannheim / Margita Wickenhäuser
)nicht ausgestellt
Intro
Max Beckmann’s »Tall Reclining Woman with Parrot« belongs to a series of works completed in exile in Amsterdam after fleeing the Nazis. It displays the artist’s typical signature: bold black contours framing the figure, while the scene itself is bathed in an intense play of colors. The spatial situation and the viewing perspective appear to dissipate and are hard to determine.
What is unmistakable, though, is the picture’s erotic character. Asleep and half-naked, the woman is surrendered to the viewer’s gaze; her naked breasts both a sexual stimulus and seductive moment. But that is not all. The green parrot on the left side of the picture can also be interpreted as a sensuous symbol. And even the relatively inconspicuous book on the table—“On Love” by the French writer Stendhal (1783–1842)—is a further erotic signal. Published in 1822, it deals at length with the attraction between the sexes.
Kunsthalle Mannheim
Transkription
A woman is reclining on a red sofa, framed by blue, green and black cushions. Her electric-yellow shift exposes her breasts and has slipped deep between her thighs. Is she a prostitute?
The color of her getup corresponds with the yellow book on the table in the foreground: Stendhal’s 1822 work „De L’amour“, „On Love“, where the French author describes his experience of unrequited love. Apparently, this is a woman with literary interests.
Perhaps it is Mathilde von Kaulbach, nicknamed „Quappi“, married to Max Beckmann since 1925? The parrot on the left would be an indication of this. It might, however, merely symbolize Vanitas, vanity, or allude to sexual connotations. The painter, printmaker and illustrator Beckmann immortalized this animal several times, since the Beckmann family owned a parrot – at least until they emigrated from Germany under the Nazis to the Netherlands.
The painter, born in 1884 in Leipzig, exhibited his work in Paris, Prague, Basel, Zurich, Brussels, New York, and at the Venice Biennial Arts Festival; he was awarded the „Reichsehrenpreis Deutscher Kunst“, a national German arts prize, and he taught the master class in the prestigious Städelschule Art Academy in Frankfurt. But he also was a preferred target for attacks by national socialists. In 1933, the law on „Gleichschaltung“ [Bringing Into Line] of all disciplines of art forced him out of his professorship. On July 19th, 1937, when the „Degenerate Art“ exhibition in Munich was opened where his paintings, too, were reviled, Beckmann went into exile in Amsterdam.
There, he painted this “Tall Reclining Woman with Parrot“ in 1940. His typical bold black contours frame brightly colored areas. He cut off the table with its vase, apples and wine bottle to suggest to the viewers that they are practically leaning over it. The painter forces us to adopt his perspective, turning us into peeping toms, into participants in his erotically charged vision of his model.
