A JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC WRITING VOLUME 8

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Max Beckmann:
Deposition
Tabitha Gomes
Art 375
The Descent from the Cross was painted by the German
artist Max Beckmann in 1917; today, its oil on a 59.5 by 50.75
inch canvas is held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York
City. This image of Christ is not an ideal one, and strays from
long-established Christian art that most people know of. The
deposition has never been shown in such an appalling way as
this, creating uneasy feelings for the viewer. The image of Christ
is almost unrecognizable, with thin skin upon his bones, pale
and yellow. The other figures in the piece are also distorted to
an extent of morbidity, with no sign of hope. The painting has
death flowing in, out, and through it, radiating the feeling of
suffering. All paintings of the descent from the cross deal with
a dead Christ during a painful time, but no artist has been as
vulgar as Beckmann.
Max Beckmann was never the average artist, and because
of his life choices, he changed as a person, thus contributing to
his style of art. How could one man use art to portray death so
realistically, and why? How does this disturbing piece compare
to other depositions throughout the history of art? Although his
style had drastic differences that separated him from the other
artists of his time, his symbolism and subject matter did not
stray from the established history.
Max Beckmann was born in Germany in 1884, in the
era of Impressionist painters: a time where artists began to
experiment with colors, techniques, and subject matter.
Although the generation around him began to search for
a renewal of form, Beckman was more interested in the
continuation of the tradition that he had grown up with. 1 And
as many artists began experimenting and forming groups like
the Blaue Reiter and Brücke painters, Beckmann stood alone
in isolation. 2 Instead of following the trend in art, he decided
to follow his own desires. What separated Beckmann’s artistic
expression from those groups was his “extensive but subtle use
of the color black.” 3 While others picked “festive colors as a
metaphor for joy and vitality,” Beckmann strayed from the
1 Dube, Wolf Dieter. The Expressionists. (London: Thames and Hudson,
1972), p. 162
2 Roh, Franx. German Painting in the 20 th Century. (Greenwich: New York
Graphic Society, 1968), p.97
3 Heckmanns, Friedrich; Loffler, Fritz; Roters, Eberhard; Wiese, Stephan
von. German Expressionism 1915-1925, The Second Generation. (Munic:
Prestel-Verlag, 1988), p. 39
trend by using dark colors, sharp black lines, and grim subject
matter to create political statements and express a variety of
emotions 4 . He used black to force objects together to create
proximity, and often outlined, or “imprisoned,” his graven
images in black, creating compositions that looked as if they
would burst from the picture plane. 5
Beckmann hated sentimentality; thus, his desire was to
record the inexpressible things in life. The stronger that desire
became, the more he wanted “to seize this frightful twitching
monster of vitality and to cage it in glass-clear sharp lines and
surfaces, to suppress it, to throttle it.” 6
Beckmann met the greatest influence of all after the
outbreak of World War I and his voluntary involvement in
1914. Beckmann was assigned to East Prussian and Belgian
fronts as a medical orderly for the German Army until the
spring of 1915. 7 Initially, Beckmann thought the war would
be a great opportunity for pictorial reportage on a catastrophic
event. 8 He suffered through his short tour in World War I
with many losses and the death of his broken-spirited friend
through suicide. 9 Upon leaving field conditions, Beckmann
was transferred to a base hospital, where he sketched his
observations and the pain on each patient’s face. 10
After being exposed to harsh conditions, death, and the
pure truth of what was involved in the war, changed Beckmann
and his early style of art. 11 The major difference in his artwork
before 1914 was that it failed to penetrate into “the souls of
things.” 12 He became more interested in abstracted human form
and shapes that pressed against each other rather than creating a
space between them. The depth in his artwork began to shrink
and the figures became crowded with no room to move freely
in space. In 1914, at the age of thirty, Beckmann stated in the
Kunst und Künstler journal: “For myself, I pursue the art of
space and depth with all my soul and try to achieve my own
4 Heckmanns, Friedrich; Loffler, Fritz; Roters, Eberhard; Wiese, Stephan
von. German Expressionism 1915-1925, The Second Generation. (Munic:
Prestel-Verlag, 1988), p. 39
5 Roh, Franx. German Painting in the 20 th Century. (Greenwich: New York
Graphic Society, 1968), p.98
6 Excerpt from Max Beckmann’s journal. Dube, Wolf Dieter. The
Expressionists. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1972), p. 167
7 Buenger, Barbera C. “Max Beckmann’s Ideologues: Some forgotton
Faces.” The Art Bulletin, Vol. 71, no. 3, (1989), p. 453-479.
8 Selz, Peter Howard. Max Beckmann, Museum of Modern Art. (New York:
Ayer Publishing, 1980), p. 21
9 Buenger, Barbera C. “Max Beckmann’s Ideologues: Some forgotton
Faces.” The Art Bulletin, Vol. 71, no. 3, (1989), p. 453-479.
10 Selz, Peter Howard. Max Beckmann, Museum of Modern Art. (New York:
Ayer Publishing, 1980), p. 22
11 Haftmann, Werner. German Art of the Twentieth Century. (New York: The
Museum of Modern Art, 1957), p.96
12 Dube, Wolf Dieter. The Expressionists. (London: Thames and Hudson,
1972), p. 163
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