8: Short Essay about Otto Dix

Here is a small essay about Otto Dix written by me: 

All the bad things - Otto Dix

Dix (1891-1969) is a giant of an artist whose work progressed through different genres during his life - dadism, realism, new objectivity (also Grosz) and German Expressionism (see here). Much of the power of his work stemmed from his dramatic portrayal of his experience in the Great War - Dix had been a machine gunner, and thus learned his anatomy in a direct and gruesome way. You can see this in his drawing, which is often twisted and torn. There is a good, short history of this violent period in Dix's art in a post by Elliot David in the Paris Review here.

There is scant sympathy in this vision of marauding German troopers: 

Some of Dix's later work took Weimar society as it's theme and was unflinchingly, often controversially, critical. He depicted sexual violence and prostitution, poverty and corruption; here we look down upon the beggar, presumably a war victim, in the street as would a shopper passing by. Like the shopper, the gallery visitor also inevitably walks past, ignoring the beggar for the next picture:

Compare Dix's card players, for example, to Cezanne:

 

Corruption of the mind and body; greed and evil intent - this is a jaded, jaundiced vision. 

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I enjoyed writing that essay. 

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One of the uncomfortable things this experiment has thrown up I think concerns the very concept of the artist as observer and commenter, and the conflict this entails with living life. How do you comment on a society that you must live in and to a great extent participate in? Was Otto Dix supremely miserable and horrible all the time, or did his work allow him to exorcise his demons, as it were? Many of the other artists I intend to consider during this project make similarly direct - often uncompromising and extreme - comments about society in their work. While I like this sort of thing, I also feel there is room for some ambiguity - in reality, though we complain about consumer capitalism, we mostly participate in it. Is there a more ambivalent reaction to it which one could express in illustration in some way?