Some self-portraits stop people in their tracks; you have to look. Max Beckmann’s 1927 Self-Portrait in Tuxedo is one of them.
In today’s Wall Street Journal, for the Saturday “Masterpiece” column, I analyze that painting, which was once owned by the National Gallery of Berlin, but — thanks to Hitler — was sold and now is the propoerty of Harvard’s Busch-Reisinger Museum.
Beckmann was a master of self-portraits. As I wrote, “Over the years, he painted himself with a horn, with a champagne glass, in a hotel, with a red scarf, with a saxophone, in a bowler hat, with soap bubbles, as a medical orderly, in Florence, in front of a red curtain, in a sailor hat, as an acrobat on a trapeze, in a blue jacket, on and on–and, in 1927, in a tuxedo.”
This one is clearly the best. In it, Beckmann “exudes self-confidence, control, power, singularity (brilliance?) and even arrogance.”
To read more, here’s the link. Or you can just gaze at the work yourself.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Busch-Reisinger Museum