Word: beckmann
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...BECKMANN-Viviano, 42 East 57th. The big Beckmann show is at the Museum of Modern Art, but Viviano gives a valuable look at such lesser known works as an unfinished triptych (Ballet Rehear sr al), eight bronzes, drawings, watercolors and oils. Through...
...contrast, the "Self-Portrait in Tuxedo," painted in 1927, radiates unprecedented self-conscious affirmation. Here stands Beckmann in a piercingly direct encounter with himself and with the viewer. In an effort to counterbalance the fluidity of his development, indicated by the amazingly protean variety of his many self-portraits, he takes a stand as absolutely assured, solid, immovable. In the midst of the uncertainty and change which prevails around and within him, he captures forever on canvas the transitory element in himself. Permanence, solidity, self-confidence--to these qualities, so precious and so rare in everyday existence, he give lasting...
...Tuxedo," Beckmann again holds a cigarette, his hand set in a masculine gesture powerfully contrasted with that of the young aesthete. The viewer's attention oscillates between the hand and face, but here the face is full and sculptured. The head is patterned with darkness--the strange lighting gives it a mask-like quality--but light is shining on him obliquely, illuminating his side, giving a hnt of underlying self-awareness. This portrait haunts the entire show like a spectre, standing over the work of a life-time as the finest embodiment of Beckmann's genius...
...these moments of the self-portrait, Beckmann comes to grips with his own inner space and manages to fill up the horrifying area surrounding...
...Beckmann painted "Self-Portrait with a Cigarette" in 1950, the year of his death. Here he steps back from the overpowering stance of the "Tuxedo." He averts his eyes, as if from his immediate presence to a meditation on his past, in a review of all of the various stages of his life history captured in his previous self-portraits. This is his last. He stands before an empty canvas, smoking to a finish the cigarette which he has always held before him, the symbol of transitoriness, burning to an end. Beckmann is dying...