The Skat Players

The Skat Players by Otto Dix, like may other works of art we have talked about, shows the extreme losses that men who served in the military faced at this time. In the service they lost legs, arms, ears, as we can see in this particular painting, and others lost more limbs and other things. To me, this painting shows the horrible things that war can bring. It shows that the few fight for the safety and peace of the many. Men like this gave their lives for the safety of the people in Germany.

 

Cezanne, an artist we have formerly talked about, also painted men playing cards at a table, but it was many many years before Dix painted his war-torn version of the same kind of scene. In Cezanne's painting, the men do not look like they have been to war, they don't seem to be missing any limbs, and this painting is an altogether much less depressing painting than Dix's. Thought, Dix was just painting what was really going on at that time with all of the veterans of the war coming home and going through life with all that the war had not taken from them and making the best of it.

 



Erich Heckel painted this picture around 1912 where we can see a scene similar to that of The Card Players and The Skat Players. In this painting, we can see the picture hanging in the background that looks like a person that has been starved or tortured, which is Christ. We can see the face of suffering of the man to the left and what looks like a menacing grin on the face of the man on the right of the painting. These men, like those of The Card Players, and in contrast to the men in The Skat Players, don't look like they have seen or been to war. They too are not missing limbs or ears and don't look to have any distorted parts of their bodies. Though, the scene is much like that of The Skat Players, the players in this scene have not been through the tough times and the hard times that war brought to the men of the firs painting above.