Self-Portrait in Tuxedo
Max Beckmann, 1927
Image not available: work still under copyright
Self-Portrait in Tuxedo is an oil-on-canvas painting Max Beckmann completed in 1927, during the years of the New Objectivity. The artist stands facing the viewer in a direct, frontal pose, wearing a tuxedo cut in the fashion of the 1920s. A cigarette rests in his left hand while his right hand is planted on his hip, a relaxed gesture set against a serious, steady gaze. Behind him a dirty white wall shows the edge of an open doorway on the left and a wooden paneled lower section; although white dominates, the picture reads as surprisingly dark. Stephan Lackner stressed its symmetry, which Beckmann uses as a emblem of security: the face divides into patches of light and shadow, and the two well-lit hands counterbalance a background that is dark on the left and light on the right. Critics were divided. Fritz Stahl rejected it harshly, while Peter Selz called it in 1964 one of the great self-portraits in the history of art. Today it is linked to Expressionism and to the Weimar Republic.
- Painter
- Max Beckmann
- Date
- 1927
- Medium
- oil paint, canvas
- Dimensions
- 140 × 96 cm
- Museum
- Busch–Reisinger Museum, Cambridge
- Movement
- New Objectivity, Expressionism
- Genre
- self-portrait
- Depicts
- Max Beckmann, tuxedo