Dix at the Met

SABINE REWALD
Associate Curator, Twentieth Century Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

ETWEEN 1989 AND 1994 the Metropolitan Berlin; Figure 5).3 Dix depicts three hideously disfig-
Museum acquired one painting, two drawings, ured officers playing the German card game skat in a
and one print (Figures 1-4) by Otto Dix typical German cafe complete with newspapers and
(1891-1969). These four works, dating from 1920 to coatrack. The players clutch their cards with foot,
1933, display this controversial German artist's bril- mouth, and mechanical hands. Their faces and heads
liance as a portraitist and draftsman. have devastating injuries-to see a real version of this
Dix was part of the movement toward a deadpan, morbid image Dix had only to step out of his studio
matter-of-fact realism that later became known as into the street. One and a half million German sol-
Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) in Germany in diers returned wounded from the war, so war cripples
the 1920s. What set Dix apart from his fellow Realists, were a common sight selling matches or begging in
however, was his fascination with the "ugly." In his the streets. Dix also consulted photographs of these
work he focused on the nightmare of World War I and wounded, some of whom had grotesque deformities.
its aftermath, the Weimar Republic, with its ubiquitous The pictures were published by the left-wing press as a
fat profiteers, raffish demimonde, worn prostitutes, deterrent to the renewed stirrings of militarism.4
and war cripples. Employing collage, Dix crammed the SkatPlayerswith
At the beginning of the war Dix had signed up as a diabolically realistic and illusionistic details: the ersatz
volunteer; he became a noncommissioned officer and blue cloth jacket of a player who wears an Iron Cross;
spent most of the next four years serving with a heavy the silver foil paper for a mechanical jaw replacement;
machine-gun battery on the Western Front. He was the black eye patch covering an absent nose; the huge
wounded several times, once nearly fatally. His painter motionless glass eye; the spiffy hairdos confected from
colleagues Max Beckmann (1884-1950) and George patches of hair; the starched white collars, ties, and
Grosz (1893-1958) suffered nervous breakdowns nubby tweed suits. One sports a cuff link on the shirt-
after fighting in combat. Dix's mental and physical sleeve he wears on his leg-the only leg among the
toughness, however, allowed him not only to survive trio-which serves as an arm. Between his preparatory
this inferno but also to relish the experience.1 He con- drawing (Figure 6) and the painting (Figure 5), Dix
tinued to draw and paint during the war, returning further "crippled" his players by eliminating the sec-
from the mayhem unharmed in body and soul. ond leg from the left figure and the two stumps from
The artisthad a relentless urge to depict reality of the the right one. The latter's torso sits now in a metal con-
most horrible kind, an urge that no doubt grew out of traption. Other picturesque collage elements are the
his wartime experiences. They shaped his near sadistic old-fashioned playing cards and front pages of the
delight in shocking his contemporaries with works newspaper DresdenTagesblatt(now the faded brown of
that reek of ugliness, distortion, perversity,and violence. a Cubist collage). The cripples' ebony "legs" form a
Dix made his debut as an enfant terrible in 1920 decorative pattern with the black legs of the chairs and
with four ferocious and macabre antiwar pictures.2 card table.
These paintings mark his shift from personal to politi- The accumulation of these lurid yet colorful illu-
cal engagement with the war. They were his response sionistic details muffles to some extent the shocking
to the political chaos, rampant inflation, mass unem- impact of this painting. By paring the image down to
ployment, bloody street battles, and assassinations that its essentials in the drypoint version, Dix makes this
followed the Versailles Treaty ofJanuary 1920. morbid card game more immediate and gripping. The
The drypoint Cardplayers of 1920 (Figure 4) in the austere black-and-white print evokes medieval images
Museum's collection is based on one of his four antiwar of games between mortals and the Devil or Death. Dix
paintings, the famous 1920 SkatPlayers(Nationalgalerie, added only one element in the print: one of the play-
ers now puffs on a cigar.
? The Metropolitan Museum of Art 1996 Dix found his distinctive style in the second half of
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 31 the 1920S when he began to adopt a more realistic if

The notes for this article begin on page 224.

219

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Figure 1. Otto Dix. SeatedNude, 1923. Pencil on paper, 59.4 x 46.7 Figure 2. Otto Dix. FemaleNude, 1933. Silverpoint on gesso pre-
cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Anna-Maria and pared paper, 57.2 x 47.3 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Stephen Kellen Foundation Gift, 1994, 1994.184 Purchase, Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation Gift, 1994,
1994.85

still somewhat caricaturalapproach and turned increas- among them, depicted their milieu with such clinical
ingly to portraiture. He painted a group of pictures of objectivity that their work documents the fashion,
businessmen, lawyers, and doctors, often giving them interior furnishings, and German social life during the
the attributes of their profession. His most successful 192os and 1930s. The most up-to-date gadgets and
portraits, however, are of artists and intellectuals who technical inventions such as cocktail glasses, tele-
did not object to being portrayed with an unflinch- phones, radios, cars, and airplanes make their debut
ingly brutal honesty. Dix focused on his sitters' foibles in these pictures. It is interesting to note that the tele-
and weaknesses, magnifying them on canvas. Despite phone (one is featured prominently in the portrait of
his ruthless realism a surprising number of eminent Roesberg) appears first in the works of American and
people wanted to be portrayed by him. Among those German artists.7
he turned down were the dramatist Gerhart The rather benign character of Dix's portrait of
Hauptmann (1862-1946) and the German chancel- Max Roesberg might be due to the fact that it is a rela-
lor Dr. Hans Luther (1879-1962). Dix liked to choose tively early picture and that it was commissioned by
his own models, rejecting those that did not interest the sitter, an acquaintance of the artist in Dresden.
him. He believed in first impressions and did not want Max Roesberg (1885-1965) was a businessman and
to modify them by closer familiarity with the sitter. Dix cofounder of Roesberg & Ehrlich, a company that
made only drawingsand preparatorystudies of his sitter, dealt in metal and mining and foundry products.8 Dix
later working from these in the solitude of his studio.5 liked to age his male sitters; here he added at least
The Businessman Max Roesberg,Dresden, 1922 (Fig- twenty years to the then thirty-seven-year-oldmodel
ure 3), is both the first painting by Dix and the first (Figures 7, 8). Roesberg is a dapper dresser in typical
example of German Realism in the 1920S to enter the 1920S fashion: he sports a starched white collar, blue
Museum's collection.6 The portrait is an outstanding patterned tie, gray waistcoat, and taupe jacket. With
example of the Neue Sachlichkeit, and as such it filled his clipped mustache and cropped salt-and-pepper
a gap in the collection. The artistsworking in the Neue hair Roesberg appears cunning and alert. As Dix was
Sachlichkeit mode in Germany during the 1920S, Dix wont to do in his early portraits of lawyers and busi-

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 24

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Figure 3. Otto Dix (1891-1969). TheBusinessmanMax Roesberg,Dresden,1922. Oil on canvas, 94 x 63.5 cm. The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 1992, 1992.146

221
Figure 4 Otto Dix. Cardplayers,192. Drypoint, 33 x 28.3 cm. Figure 5. Otto Dix, SkatPlayers,1920. Oil on canvas with
Figure 4. Otto Dix. Cardplayers,1920. Drypoint, 33 x 28.3 cm. Figure 5. Otto Dix, SkatPlayers,1920. Oil on canvas with
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Charles Z. Offin Fund and A. x
collage, 110.2 87 cm. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Hyatt Mayor Purchase Fund, Marjorie Phelps Starr Bequest, 1989, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Nationalgalerie Berlin
1989.1112

nessmen, he included colorful details that relate to Cologne. For much of the rest of his life he was penni-
the sitter's business. The quaint, unattractive clock less and was supported by exasperated relatives. As
on the wall shows 1:32 P.M. (the busy Roesberg can one of them exclaimed: "He owed everybody money
only pose during lunch); the tear-off calendar from and we had to support him. Who would have believed
Muller & Co. A.G., Duisburg; the mail-order catalogue that our ne'er-do-well cousin would end up in the
of machine parts in his left hand on cheap pink Met?"10
inflation-period paper, and the registered and already In 1939 Roesberg and his wife, Margarete, who were
stamped letter to Otto Dix on his desk blotter. The Jewish, immigrated to Santiago, Chile, where he
sleek black-and-chrome telephone-the most up-to- worked in the wholesale milk business and where he
date model-takes up nearly one quarter of the desk. died in 1965.11 Far from being the shrewd business-
It brings an international flair into this provincial man depicted in Dix's portrait, Roesberg was a colorful,
office, which Dix depicted in the colors of money and bohemian sort of man who befriended and bought
commerce, greens and browns with black and white. works from artists in Dresden. His nieces and nephews
I have been able to piece together the life of remember him as a gentle, humorous sort who
Roesberg with information supplied by the sitter's rel- delighted them with puns and doggerel during family
atives who immigrated to the United States. They con- reunions.12 Many remembered the portrait from their
tacted the Museum after Carol Vogel's brief note on childhood when it hung in Roesberg's Dresden apart-
the painting's acquisition appeared in the New York ment. They were united in their intense dislike of the
Times inJune 1992.9 painting and thought the green background offensive,
Ironically the businessman Roesberg had no head the figure wooden, and the posturing as a business-
for business. He prospered only briefly during the man laughable.
inflation, at the time he sat for his portrait. After he However uncertain Dix's place as a painter might
lost his money through bad investments, he eked out a be, he remains celebrated as a draftsman. During the
living as a trade representative for a metal company in artist's first exhibition in France in Paris in 1972, even

222
 the French critics mustered respect for his "metier."13
Drawing was the backbone of Dix's art, and today he is
considered one of the finest draftsmen of the twenti-
eth century. He always drew, whether in pencil, char-
coal, wash, red chalk, ink, watercolor, or gouache.
The two drawings that the Museum acquired in
1994 display Dix's virtuoso draftsmanship in different
ways. The 1923 pencil sketch of a seated nude
(Figure 1) is free and bold, and the 1923 silverpoint
FemaleNude (Figure 2) is controlled and precise. In
the earlier sheet the plump young model is naked
except for a large bow in her hair and shoes on her
feet. Dix indicated the outlines of her full body with a
few strong lines and added delicate shading to her
shoulders and torso. The artist's female nudes usually
shock by their skeletal boniness or crude fatness, but
here Dix depicted his young model with surprising tact.
In the 1933 FemaleNude Dix combines eroticism
with psychological insight. The identity of the sitter is
unknown. The great expressiveness of the model's
strong-boned, mannish face distracts from her nudity.
Neither young nor attractive, the sitter projects a pow-
Figure 6. Otto Dix. SkatPlayers,1920. Pencil and ink on erful personality. She gazes away pensively with eyes
paper, 28 x 21.6 cm. Private collection that have seen much. Although the pliant body

Figure 7. Max Roesberg in the early 1920s, Dresden

(photo: courtesy Herrmann Roesberg, New York)

Figure 8. Max Roesberg in the 195oS, Santiago, Chile

(photo: courtesy Herrmann Roesberg, New York)

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appears near and available, the woman herself seems Nationalgalerie, which supports the museum, was the driving force
behind the purchase of the painting (for 7.5 million German marks,
distant and cold. She seems to express all the weari-
or about $5.5 million). The Freunde organized an advertising cam-
ness of the Weimar Republic that was drawing to an
paign to solicit donations for the acquisition, and posters of the Skat
end. Playerscovered the entire city.
In emulation of the Old Masters, especially Hans
4. Hartley and Twohig, OttoDix 1891-1969, p. o11.
Baldung Grien whom he greatly admired, Dix 5. This was confirmed by one of Dix's surviving sitters from the
adopted the difficult medium of silverpoint in 1931. 1920S. Professor Volkmar Glaser, who is depicted as an adolescent
The hard point of the metal on a gesso-treated ground in the 1925 Family Portrait of the LawyerFritz Glaser (Staatliche
requires steady pressure and a sure hand. Kunstsammlungen, Galerie Neuer Meister, Dresden), told me about
Dix was a professor of painting at the Dresden this experience in a letter of Feb. 26, 1994. (I discuss Dix's working
method and his "artificial aging" of male sitters in the Dresden
Academy of Art from 1927 until 1933. The ready avail-
painting and in the MMA painting in my article "Tales of Two
ability of models inspired him to paint and draw a Sitters: Notes on Two Dix Portraits," Burlington Magazine [April
series of nudes. The often provocative nature of his
1996] no. 1117, vol. 88, pp. 249-252.
nudes from the 1920S is absent in his later works, 6. The MMA bought the painting at auction at Sotheby's, Berlin,
replaced by exquisite technique and a greater May 29, 1991, lot 32. The work had been consigned to Sotheby's,
humaneness. New York,by one of Roesberg's descendants, who was advised by the
In 1933 Dix was dismissed from his post by the auction house, however, to put the picture up for sale in an auction
National Socialists, a fate shared by all avant-garde devoted solely to German art in Berlin. The picture was virtually
artists. He would take refuge in neutral subjects such unknown; it had never been lent to an exhibition, and in the vast lit-
erature on Dix it had been reproduced only once-faintly-and its
as landscape and allegory. This drawing is the last work
location described as unknown (F. Loffler, Otto Dix I891-I969:
in what is regarded as Dix's characteristic style. OeuvrederGemdlde[Recklinghausen, 1981] p. 20, pl. 9).
7. To my knowledge, the American painter Morton Livingston
Schamberg (1881-1918) was the first artist to represent the tele-
phone in his Cubist painting Telephone,1916 (Columbus Museum of
NOTES Art). It may also have inspired a later work by Schamberg's friend
Charles Sheeler, Self-Portrait,1923 (Museum of Modern Art, New
York), in which Sheeler uses the telephone as an alter ego. In
1. Like many artists of his generation, Dix fell under the spell of
Germany the telephone was first depicted by H. M. Darvinghausen
Friedrich Nietzsche. In 1911, at the age of twenty, he made his only in his painting The Profiteer,1921 (Kunstmuseum, Dfisseldorf).
known sculpture, a lifesize plaster bust of the philosopher (location There the sitter is seen with a box of cigars, a cocktail glass, a liquor
unknown). Nietzsche's endorsement of instinct over intellect bottle, and, visible through the window, brightly lit Manhattanesque
proved very seductive for the generation that had grown up under skyscrapers.
the restrictions of the late 1gth century. In his writings he urged that
8. Information received in a letter from Dr. Nickel, vice director,
the most intense emotions, both positive and negative, be sought
Stadtmuseum Dresden, Aug. 13, 1992.
out and experienced through music, lovemaking, dance, hatred, or
warfare. Dix had some of Nietzsche's writings with him during the 9. Carol Vogel, "The Art Market: Portrait's Round Trip," TheNew
York Times, June 12, 1992. No biographical information on
war, but it is not certain if the text was The GayScienceor Thus Spake
Zarathustra.See Sarah O'Brien Twohig, "Dix and Nietzsche," in K. Roesberg was given in Sotheby's auction catalogue. The consigner
insisted on anonymity and has not replied to written requests for
Hartley and S. O'Brien Twohig, OttoDix 1891-1969, exh. cat., Tate
information passed on to Sotheby's. In response to Vogel's note in
Gallery (London, 1992) pp. 40-48.
the Times,a cousin of Roesberg's asked to see the painting and put
2. Three of four antiwar paintings survive: Match Vendor,1920
me in contact with other members of the extended Roesberg family.
(Staatsgalerie Stuttgart), Prager Strasse, 1920 (Galerie der Stadt I discuss this episode in greater detail in "Talesof Two Sitters."
Stuttgart), and SkatPlayers.The fourth, and most notorious, TheWar
1o. Telephone conversation with Anita Bender, June 5, 1992.
Cripples(with Self-Portrait),1920, was exhibited at the Dada Fair in
Berlin in 1920 to much controversy. Confiscated in 1937 by the 1 1. Letter of Oct. 12, 1992, from Werner Simonson, who kindly
National Socialists because it mocked German soldiers, it was consulted the files of the Jewish Center in Santiago, Chile.
included in the 1937 exhibition "Degenerate Art," which traveled 12. Letter from Leonore Gordon, Aug. 25, 1992.
throughout Germany. The National Socialists probably destroyed 13. Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, OttoDix-peintures,
the work.
aquarelles,gouaches, dessins et gravures du cyclede "la guerre," 1972.
3. The painting hung for many years on extended loan at the See also Otto Conzelmann, "Ein grosser Zeichner," Otto Dix-
Galerie der Stadt Stuttgart, until the heirs of the owner sold it to the Handzeichnungen,Pastelle, Lithographienaus der Sammlung Walther
Nationalgalerie, Berlin, in late 1995. The Verein der Freunde der Groz,exh., cat., Stadtische Galerie (Albstadt, 1976) p. (1).

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