The Night
Max Beckmann, 1918
Image not available: work still under copyright
The Night is an oil on canvas by Max Beckmann, painted between 1918 and 1919, when the artist was struggling with disillusionment after the First World War. The scene shows a violent break-in at a middle-class home in a cramped room with an attic-like feel: a man is hanged, the wife, half-naked and tied up, has been assaulted, and an intruder tucks the child under his arm. The dog howls toward the edge of the picture, seeking help, while a gramophone under the table seems meant to drown out the screams. Beckmann used himself as the model for the man and his wife and son for the other figures. The two candles in the foreground, one extinguished and one still burning, work as symbols of death and of a very fragile hope. Formally, the painting relies on browns and greys with carefully placed touches of red, and on a flat, compressed space that recalls Fauvism, though the figures remain motionless despite the apparent chaos. It is regarded as a key work of the New Objectivity: for Beckmann, suffering has no purpose or redemption, and victims and aggressors alike appear trapped.
- Painter
- Max Beckmann
- Date
- 1918
- Medium
- canvas, oil paint
- Dimensions
- 134 × 155 cm
- Museum
- Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf
- Movement
- New Objectivity, Expressionism
- Genre
- history painting
- Depicts
- man