iconography of the triptychs

0D[�%HFNPDQQ��7KH�,FRQRJUDSK\�RI�WKH�7ULSW\FKV$XWKRU�V��&OLIIRUG�$P\[5HYLHZHG�ZRUN�V��6RXUFH��7KH�.HQ\RQ�5HYLHZ��9RO��1R��$XWXPQ��SS��3XEOLVKHG�E\��Kenyon College6WDEOH�85/��http://www.jstor.org/stable/4333276 .$FFHVVHG��

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Kenyon College is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Kenyon Review.

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=kenyon

http://www.jstor.org/stable/4333276?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

Clifford Amyx

MAX BECKMANN: THE ICONOGRAPHY OF THE TRIPTYCHS

IF WE ARE convinced that painting is no longer a matter of the "pure eye," as artists wanted it to be in the late 19th

Century, and that it cannot be a pure didactic or "instruc- tional" instrument such as it may have been in earlier cen- turies, we are compelled to accept today some variation of a "presentationalist" aesthetic. The painting is "all there"; it is to be seen. But if we make the further inference that the painter is precluded from having an attitude about things in the world, or assume that his imagery loses purchase and a fundamental meaning by the fact of being artistic, we com- mit either an arrogance or a superficiality. We must begin to see informed meanings in at least some of the paintings of our time.

The work of Max Beckmann offers an immediate and critical test of such an aesthetic. James Thrall Soby has said that his work may "one day seem to iconographers a par- ticularly rewarding subject of research." The implication may be, thouglh I doubt that Mr. Soby would want it to be, that a study of meaning must wait until the future, when the work will be seen from that "distance" at which incono- graphers ordinarily approach their subject. But it is an error to assume that we get the meaning of a painting by waiting until h-istory has shaken off or sifted out the feeling we lhave for the concepts in the work; painting by its very nature compels a contemporary assent or dissent. Surely an inquiry into the meaning of such works as those of Beckmann ought

CLIFFORD AMYX 611

to be undertaken now when the full complexities of his painterly statement are real to ourselves.

Beckmann has been accepted as one of the major paint- ers of our time in spite of certain acknowledged "difficulties" in meaning and imagery. I cannot take the time to trace out his earlier development, or to engage in comparative evaluations against such major figures as Picasso. Casual estimates, and a few quarrels on such matters, are now going on. The typical power in Beckmann's work first emerged in that time (1917-24) in whiclh he produced those works the German critics called sach/ich. Throughout this period, when Beckmann admitted to a conccrn witlh structuraal problems in the relation of two and three dimensional space, there is an impressive flooding clarity in his pictures, even if there is a certain "ambiguity" in space structure. Color is still for tlhe most part object-color, held in a flooding liglht whiclh may be ambiguous in source. Subject matter is drawn, late in the period, from crowded, t"apartmented" life in Berlin.

Even at this time Beckmann was well enough known so that extended analyses were made of his works. Important among tlese is Wilhelm Fraenger's analysis of The Dlreain. Fraenger saw Beckmann's work as a "physiognomy of the grotesque," a kind of "estrangement," long before surrealism made that term popular. There is surely an estrangement, and yet an "objectivity": The Dreami is obviously not Beck- mann's own dream world, no one has seriously called him a surrealist. The figurative dreaming, blindness, mutilation arc objective characters of these people. Crowded into a spacc in which some kind of enforced knowledge of each other seems demanded, they betray only incapacities. There is a fortuitous and arbitrary quality in their relationshlips.

Much of tlis arbitrariness appears throughout Bcck- mann's work. But his painting again undergoes a clhange and the term "objectivity" does not promise all that it once did. With Zerctelli (1927) bolder patternings and washes against impasto uproot objective color in a sense, line appears

612 BECKMANN TRIPTYCHS

powerfully and more independently, and a new complexity makes way for a broader statement.

I am concerned here with the triptychs, and at a conventional level of meaning. The triptychs develop a statement through contrast, and one possible only in the triptych form. They have a complexity and "ambiguity" comparable to much contemporary poetry. Though such parallels cannot be pushed too far, there is in these works by Beckmann much that seems similar to the "inclusiveness" and "resolution" in T. S. Eliot's poetry. If The Waste Land is, as Ezra Pound said, the longest poem in the English language, De- partutre has an equivalent "reach." Both Eliot's poetry and Beckmann's painting are far removed from an overt didac- ticism or a mere comedy of manners. The earlier hard imagery of Eliot and the "objectivity" of Beckmann finally give way to a complex and ranging statement, sometimes

. 9 wlt h an irony.

Departure (Figure I) is the first of the triptychs (1934- 37). It has usually been interpreted hurriedly, and perhaps too narrowly, as a reflection of Beckmann's own flight from the beginning cruelties of Nazi rule. Beckmann had already indicated in Galleria U nberto (1925) his feeling toward Fascism in Italy, and throughout these years he was obliquely concerned with politics. But his remoteness from actual political activity is reflected in his later statements in which he speaks half-mockingly of the "game"l of politics.

It is legitimate enough, at one level, to interpret Depar- tlire as a record of political refuge. The representation of "brutality" in the left panel (Picasso, too, was concerned with brutality somewhat later), and the mummery in the right panel, are contrasted with a symbolic serenity and departure. But the essential problem here, and throughout the triptychs, is to indicate how far we can push toward an interpretation which will make each image, in the context of total imagery, meaningful in such terms. A painting can "communicate" before it is fully "understood"; a painting

CLI FFORD AMYX 613

need not be fully determinate in symbolism to communicate a generic mood and meaning to us. But it is the expansion of this mood through imagery, taking up things in the world, which makes the painting more than an arrogance or an undocumented attitude-which makes it more than a mere effusion or an explosive "expression" of some passing state in the painter himself. Departutre gets its purchase on the world, and becomes more than a merely diffuse attitude, by a documentation in major contrasted images; human as against inhuman, present against past, urban life against the open sea and sky. Stated in this fashion the "reach" of Beckmann's triptychs becomes apparent; they have an in- clusion and resolution not typical of the painting of our time.

The left panel in Departure is overtly a representation of cruelty and barbarism; three of the major figures are bound, one is mutilated. The figure in the upper left is wholly "detached" by virtue of an enforced solipsism; he is in a receptacle (a kind of barrel or can) used for rejected things. The figure bound to the column is mutilated and gagged, the woman prostrate in front is also bound about the wrists and the waist. It is possible, of course, to interpret the "free" figure who wields a weapon as an intrusive figure, a symbol of brutality, laying about him in the artist's studio; he is precisely in plane with a conventional still-life, with fruit and a plate. And this still-life is itself on a cart; it is a thing to be moved about, an obvious piece of "furniture."

What suspends such a direct interpretation is the fact that the figure wielding a weapon of brutality is dressed as an artist himself might be dressed, and the weapon seems to be bound with a cloth; muted and ineffectual. What we have is a kind of irony, latent to be sure, but not excluding the possibility that the artist himself may be an instrument of brutality through the borrowing of strategies which he does not understand (overtly, a submission to any contemporary brutality). This submission will result in a


destruction of one of his conventional "props" (the artist's model) and will at the same time destroy his disciplinary freedom as an artist. There is nothing in the figure of the executioner to suggest that there is any sinister force within himself; his role is simply "assumed."

The panel to the right has all of the appurtenances of a "drama" (the space is not dissimilar to a stage space) but the uniformed attendant, a theatrical usher, shows that the space is actually a corridor; it is only a "section," or a fugi- tive drama, with which we are presented. Man and woman are bound together in an arbitrary and unnatural relationship. Such an arbitrary union could be logically atten-ded only by its spawn, a homunculus. The only suggestion of a genuine fertility (the fish) is borne by the usher who is himself a functionary in a rootless and transient existence. The light is a lamp at the level of the exposed breast of the woman; it is not a candle, as in other works by Beckmann where a genuine search or a fruitful guidance is indicated. Th-e drama is made further meaningless by a loud and arbitrary rlhythm suggested by the drum, to which is pasted a broadside; another attribute suggesting transiency, ephemeral novelty, "news."

The side panels present themselves, then, as a docu- mcntation of contemporary brutality and a transient meaningless existence; what they have in common (and the similar space intervals suggest that they are to be taken as correlated statements) is an implied relation of man and woman in a broader context. Their roles are ""reversed" in the dominance of man in one panel, woman in the other, and there is nothing in either panel to suggest that their relationships are natural.

It is the major contrast of both these panels with the central panel which makes the whole statement. The figures here, in larger scale and with a different and more natural perspective, are not engaged in artificial pursuits. Color is lighter, there is open sea and sky, and the figures have a greater degree of massiveness and plasticity. The hooded

- s : -~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~. ... .

--- x- x~~~~~~~~~~~~j

~~~~~~~a ek an EA T R 13-35 ~~~~~~~~~~~B coreyo Mseum of Moer Ar

CLIFFORD AMYX 615

figure and the fisherman with the crown inevitably recall those figures in Eliot's Waste Land, the Hooded Man and the Fisher King. In the original grail legends upon which Eliot drew for his sustained metaphor of a ritual sacrifice (to bring fertility again to the Waste Lalnd), the Fisher King was a mutilated or impotent figure. Here the King is full- bodied and vigorous. And the hooded figure, bearing again the element of fertility (the fish) is, as in Waste Land, "dimly seen"; he is masked. I have no evidence, of course, that Beckmann was acquainted with the grail legends, or that he intended his imagery to be specified in that connec- tion. The single clue is that he is said to have written "Scenes from Shakespeare's Tempest" on the back of these panels when they were removed from Germany. Ferdinand, in that drama, is considered by Eliot to be another specification of the Fisher King. It is not unimportant that ritual kingship and sacrifice appears in Beckmann's later work. Nor is the "cc fice" in the left panel of Departutre fully meaningful unless these ranges of his imagery are taken into account. More and more Beckmann makes a fusion and interrelation of the concepts of artistry, kingship, drama, sacrifice. De- parture is simply a preliminary exploration of many of the symbols and images which document these concepts.

If there is a "resolution" here (Erlisungg, without special connotations of religious values) Beckmann holds to a generic level which is not programmatic, only human and "universal." In this sense Beckmann is not a didactic painter, nor could he be without adopting a more programmatic usage of overt and obvious imagery. Beckmann suggests a certain mystery in a final resolution through the hooded figure, the ego, which he has said must be veiled.

I do not pretend to say, of course, that I have exhausted the determinate meaning of Departure. The major contrasts, and the formal devices which intensify these contrasts, are obvious enough, but the deeper ironies depend on exhausting the rather precise interrelations of the symbols. That De-


parture was painted at a time when Beckmann was forced into a decision of his own should not obscure the fact that there is a valid and compelling statement here which deals with more than a merely personal flight.

Why Departure has been considered a major painting is exhibited not only in the quality and meaning of the work itself, but in the fact that it indicated a direction for much of Beckmann's work over a period of years. The degree of force and inclusiveness which we can attribute to a symbol or an image is hardly to be exhausted, throughout its full implications, from a single picture. Departure convention- alizes (the crown of the Fisher King) but it also takes up much in the related pictures of the time; the fish in Der Wels, the woman in the left panel from studies made earlier, the homunculus in the right panel appears much the same as squat figures in the Beach Scene (1930). In Man and Woman (1934) the drama of the right panel is transformed into a "universal"; the arbitrary binding of man and woman and their inverse relationship is preserved, but they are ab- stracted from any local setting, and placed against sea and sky, in a universal "fate" in which they represent themselves to each other through cold black masks. It is obvious then that no symbol can be carried from one picture to another, preserving precisely the same level of meaning; we can only point to a persistent usage of elements which are "reduced" from symbol to imagery, and to a meaning made more determinate in a different pictorial context. Much that is diffuse at one level (when considered "abstractly") becomes determinate when we understand the full range of Beckmann's usage.

There is another element in Departure which appears in Beckmann's painting after that time. The king, first 'This is all that is meant (relevant to problems of criticism) when we speak of an artist's symbolism as "personal." A single and directly expressed image will bear all of the urgencies which the artist feels at the time, but it may also be freighted with much that is casual and incidental, or even banal. An iconography is built only through a re- peated "test" of the resources of any symbol, deeply felt.

CLIFFORD AMYX 617

conventionalized through the crown in Departure, appears as the central figure in the painting by that title (1937), and again in the triptych The Actors (1941-42). I neglected to note that in Departutre there is a comment on the relation between functional leadership and the panoply of a local kingslip through the ermine worn by the drummer (casually noted by Perry Rathbone as suggesting Louis XI). That Beckmann chose a symbol remote from his own day, rather than some more direct evidence of a degeneration of leadership in the time of Nazi rule in Germany, again holds his statement at a certain level. It is a comment on the general nature of leadership, and we must "translate" it into contemporary terms.

In The Actors, the kingly figure (central in the triptych) is about to sacrifice himself and he comes thus closer to the traditional role of the Fisher King. (HamiZlet is usually suggested.) But h-e is the central figure in a drama and the whole triptych enacted over a subterranean action of figures "below stage." In this and in the later triptychs Beckmann's iconography grows ever more complex as he incorporates more and more material. In the panel at the left there is a figure of the "teacher" compresent with a woman in reveren- tial attitude, but also with a bearded figure bearing a weapon, who bars his way. Below the platform there are only a series of feet while on the steps a young man sits reading spuriously "universal" news, the New York Times. The panel to the right poses the question of self-knowledge and traditional knowledge in the figure of the young woman and the antique cast. Tlis again is staged above musicians and figurcs of young ladies. In the central panel, participating with the ritual action of the king, are a clairvoyante and two singers, 2Again I find a striking parallel in that Eliot's Waste Lan(d was rcad as a document of personal despair, Departure as a straightforward document of personal flighlt. But in both Eliot and Bcckmann there is a lcvcl of meaning which forbids this "intentional" fallacy, or a direct identification of the artist withi the protagonist. Therc is, of course, some documentation of the artist's "situation" in both, but the validity of the statenment must exist beyond any merely personal hardship or feeling.


staged over an actors' room. What keeps us from a full commitment to the "drama"

and hence from a full and sympathetic identification with the protagonist (who does not appear wholly different from Beckmann himself) are the fully presented trapping-s of the stage; this is, as Mr. Rathbone suggests, only a "rehearsal." The figure to the right of the king has removed his spectacles in order to read his score more fully; 1he does not yet know, his degree of participation. And there are otlher (and indeterminate) figures about. There is hardly the degree of contrast here between the central and side panels that we have in Departutre; there is a unity of thematic materials and plastic treatment holding the materials at roughly the same level. In all three of the panels there is a transition from the "below stage" figures (actors, musicians) through inter- mediate figures on the steps who seem indifferent to the drama, engaged in their own preoccupations.

Blinid- mani's Buff is the largest of the Beckmann triptychs and, as I see it, the most complex in statement. There is no blunt opposition here; the imagery is more diverse and, as Mr. Rathbone has suggested, there is a continued inven- tiveness in Beckmann's work which is ever more difficult to "reduce" to a prose statement. What is striking in these panels is a play upon scale which contributes greatly to the intensity and plastic reality of the imagery. Beckmann has gone as far here in the "ambiguity" of the two and three dimensional forces as in any of his works. The figures in the right and left panel are again "staged" against the center panel by columns at the sides. A normal scale is set in each side panel by a young man and young woman, and back of these figures are scattered figures which increasc in scale as we move upward, contradicting a normal thrust into deep space. In the left panel especially there is hardly room for movement as the figures crowd together. In the central panel there is more plasticity to the figures, they exist in a more uniform scale and in a more usual space progression; the

CLIFFORD AMYX 619

figure on the divan and the head of the ass bring this portion of the panel forward, and the high yellows at the top and bottom reinforce the plane.

This triptych is an excellent documentation of Eliot's theory that a work of art can "communicate" before it is "understood." The imagery, and especially the color, inform us of the nature of the concert or divertissement in the center panel and its essential relation to the young man and woman in the side panels, before any precise interpretation. But there is a more determinate meaning. This is "blindman's buff" and the two cenltral participants in the game are signalized by a candle; the others participate "socially," that is, they are co-present, but their gestures indicate various degrees of awareness. Between the two principal figures there is every distraction. The lateral figure toward the front, a Bacchic musician, is perhaps the most fully tbodied figure in the entire tryptich and this extreme plasticity thrusts him forward. The clock is magnified, harsl, tem- poral, against the slower burning coals. The drummer h-as the vigor and gesture of a brutal and direct rhythm against tlhe lyric h-arp. Whether the total "concert" is barbaric or pastoral (and this is indeterminate) it is intruded upon only by two figures, a man who is at least partially masked by the head of the ass, suggesting lewdness in his relation to the woman. The central panel, and its subordinate "frame" (the columns) is therefore in an opposition to the central pro- tagonists on each side, but the carnival and party-like imagery holds the opposition at a more delicate suspension. At one level of interpretation this is only a genre piece, at another it is a statement of fundamental human dispositions.

For the most part the determinate meaning is made with minor contrasts set within a larger inclusive statement. Beckmann's intention (and we are concerned with it here only insofar as it can be understood from his work) is docu- mented not only in the powerful intensities and oppositions of color but in the contrasts in imagery which create a ten-


sion; the presence of the coals against the magnified clock, the "discord" of the lyric harp and the primitive drum-beat, exhibit various levels of the distraction that exist between the protagonist and the object of his search. We can, of course, "abstract" these various elements as a minor statement: the coals and the clock suggest that timiie is not always experienced in the same way, and in other places the opposition of candle and lamp suggest another variant on this same fundamental theme. It is in one sense an opposition of the natural as against the artificial and the present modes against the past. But it ought not to be understood, I tlhink, as merely an assertion that the past is better than the present; only that some symbols mark our fundamental human im- pulses more clearly. Again, it must be noted that these minor oppositions are set in terms of a larger statement; they are meant to be seen and understood in such a context.

This "context" is, of course, a major artistic accomplish- ment; it is a fully bodied structure. What h-as seemed to most commentators as a rather unusual fusion of German expressiveness and power with a Frenchi Peil?tilre, is to be explained in part, of course, by Beckmann's presence in Paris at certain times. The einltucre will, of course, "carry" the picture for many spectators; whatever they make or do not make of the "meaning." The luxury of imagery is supported by a color which never fails to give actual support to the complexity. Even for a taste formed on French art, and more especially for one which appreciates the full color range of Fauvist painting, Beckmann will not be lacking in direct appeal.

\XWhat remains of "objectivity" and body-in-space in Beckmann's later work, is a reinforcement of the tactile quality inevitably promised by the commanding presence of the figure. In one sense this tactile quality is played upon in Beckmann's consciousness of the role of hands; it is very rare that hands are hidden or inexpressive in his painting. A persistent symbol for futility and lack of contact with the

CLIFFORD AMYX 621

world in his painting is severed, mutilated, or bound hands. It is further significant that when Beckmann turned to sculpture the figure of the Man in the Dark offers a full interpretation of what it means to be blind: the hands grope, to be sure, but there is an emphasis on the eyeball itself, which frequently occurs in the sculpture of blind persons.

Even the emphasis on the sensuous quality of color is never to be thought of as a mere "passage," but as a calcu- lated (or at the very least a deeply felt) power in the color itself. The body of the figure is actually built in color so that the blacks (especially line) stand as accent, never the full constructive principle. Where color approaches arbitrariness it is actually a revision in the interest of the form- ingr process; no color will be lost, it will be fused into the new form. It is from this feeling of the painting "in process" that the power of Beclkmann's impact on the spectator comes; if we lose that we lose the expressive power of the painting. We can then fall back on other attributes, einMture or "inconography" as we will, but we lose the painterly emotions of the artist himself. And this too is what Beck- mann means when he denies the validity of an abstract philosophical approach. ". . . Nothing could be more ridiculous or irrelevant than a 'philosophical conception' painted purely intellectually without the terrible fury of sense grasping each v1isible form of beauty and ugliness." It is significant that his lang-uage indicates a "fury of sense grasping"; what is still objective in Beckmann is this intensity in contact witl the real.

As a furtlher emplhasis in this direction, tlhere is Beck- mann's conception of the primacy of the Ego (and Hume's "impressionist" skepticism and Spencer's latent "sensism" have not been satisfactory to him); this primacy is docu- mented from the time when various kinds of "apartment- ing" (Family Scene, The Dreamii) appeared in Beckmann's work. It has been indicated over and over again that the figures in these pictures exist in and for themselves, and


that thieir relationships to each other are of the most arbitrary kind. Even when there is no overt symbol of forcing relationships (the "closed" room), figures turn away from each other, hide their faces, or present their backs. The questions B3eckmann posed, "Wlhat are you? What am I?" are the persistently important and just as persistently unanswered questions.

The full impact of Beckmann's residence in this coun- try is still to be judged. At the time of this writing a memorial show is planned which will confirm or deny any weakening of his creative impulse. Even so it is significant that a very recent major triptych, Beginning, springs not so much from any "novelty" in his American environment but from a fundamental study of "education" in wlich the roots are to be found in Jean Paul (Friedrich Richter). The right panel seems only more didactic than usual in Beck- mann, and a confirmation of the opposition of either Judaic or cabbalist traditions along with the humanist tradition to much that is, again, ephemeral, dreamt, or merely "fan- tasy" (even Puss-in-Boots is "inverted"). Beckmann's interpretation is a basic contrast of certain persistent values with the essentially false panoply of specialized or individual preoccupations. He has indicated a "beginning" in traditional and standard values; there is another documentation than in Departure, but the contemporary "situation" remains unchanged.

My interpretations here have remained at what I should call a "conventional" level; these are the meanings wlhich are available through the structure of meanings in the work itself, and the mutations of the symbols in Beckmann's own development as a painter. I have no doubt that a close reading of the sources (especially the cabbalist sources) with which Beckmann is acquainted would sharpen individual images. But it would only be a sharpening; it 'would not wholly uproot the "presented" meanings. And the same thing will hold of any specialized interpretation;

CLI FFORD AMYX 623

psycho-analytic or other. There is a public frame of refer- ence in these works. Wh-ile they may have an "ambiguity" fully contemporary in origin and feeling, there is finally no wavering or indecision. Beckmann's work is a genuine iconography-that is, an interpretation. To see these works as only "represented" chaos or bare "objectivity" is to see the purposes of the painter only obscurely; it is to see a "submission" on the part of Beckmann.

It would be obtuse, I think, not to realize a deep moral conviction in Beckmann; and yet there is a documentation which keeps this conviction from being merely personal and effusive. Th-e richness and power of his painterly statement is by now fully appreciated. He surely does not have the same metaphysic as Picasso; there is little or nothing of the kind of intellectual wit which is in Picasso's The Painter anid I-lis Model. Nor do we have emotions directed at a single event, such as Picasso's Guernica. But there is a sweep which never wavered in its values and valuations. It is a statement, complex and powerful, of what it means to be hiuman today.

iconography of the triptychs

Documents