Max Beckmann, Night

Max Beckmann, Night

Beckman believed that one must find the metaphysical in the new objectivity; metaphysical in this sense referring to the representation of human destiny. He showed the effects of war, how even neighbors can become torturers. One day you could have coffee with them the next they could be torturing you to see if you are the enemy.This was a post world war I movement. This is such a gruesome painting, and even kind of twisted looking. When I look at it I feel like I may go crazy like these people. The war has driven them mad, not being able to trust anyone and people and loved ones getting tortured all over the place. It is so straight forward. I love paintings like these, because they do show the hard to see kinds of things, those things you do not want to be shown, but the public needs to see what has happened. One needs to see the reality of things and art brings that out for all to see. The song “After You’ve Gone” was written by Henry Creamer and composed by Turner Layton in 1918, around the same time as this painting. One of the lyrics at the very end reads “I'm gonna haunt you so, I'm gonna taunt you so It's gonna drive you to ruin After you've gone, after you've gone away.” Although this is talking about a breakup like most songs now adays, it has a deeper meaning to me. This woman is going crazy for her lost loved one. He left her, she is broken, like many of the people that were caught up in WWI, they are left with nothing. Turning to no one and eventually it made them crazy. Not knowing who to trust, if anyone. The War took so much from people and didn’t stop taking, the scary thing was they never knew who was on their side. Like the heartbroken woman in the song who thought her lover was on her side and would stay with her forever, these people were blindsided by people who were as close to the as neighbors they saw every single day.