Otto Dix, as I write in my review of the Otto Dix show at the Neue Galerie, published in today’s Wall Street Journal, is not an easy artist to like. But he is one to admire, mostly. I am glad he has his first solo exhibit in North America in my backyard.
Although I have a hard time with his sexual murder pieces, his portraits are fantastic (see some on the WSJ slide show). And although they are not his best, I enjoyed looking at most of the paintings that he toned down, for various reasons.
The picture of his family at left, painted in 1927, is an example. It’s a Madonna and child, as are one or two other paintings in the show.
Back to those lustmord paintings, though. Olaf Peters, the art-history professor at the Martin-Luther-University-Halle-Wittenberg who curated this exhibit, told me that Dix created them in the full knowledge of, and desire for, the notoriety they’d spark. It worked.
I call this the “shock and awe” tactic and many artists and writers of all disciplines use it. When the artists actually awes with talent — as Dix did — it doesn’t bother me so much. But too often artists deploy shock and awe to great effect without the necessary raw talent. They are long on shock and short on awe. It’s a mystery to me why curators, etc., go along.
Of course, everyone is entitled to his or her definition of talent — so I won’t name names that I think are getting away with it. But it’s worth thinking about.
Photo Credit: Courtesy Neue Galerie