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Sydney Norton
Museum Educator and Coordinator of Public Programs, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum

Day and Dream is an enigmatic series of fifteen lithographs that Max Beckmann made in 1946, at the close of his nearly decade-long period of self-imposed exile from Nazi Germany in Amsterdam. He completed the portfolio on June 24, shortly before embarking on his long-awaited journey to the United States, where he would live and work until his death in 1950. The series deals specifically with themes that preoccupied the artist during his final years in Amsterdam. Revealing little of the scathing social commentary that characterized many of his prints from the 1920s,¹ the subject matter of the Amsterdam lithographs is more private in nature, evoking, for example, feelings of entrapment and disorientation and allusions to life in Holland; his recurring concerns about war; and references to the artist’s hope and optimism about career prospects in the United States.² While many of these lithographs are specific in terms of subject matter and place, others are more uncertain, reflecting on questions of morality and religion, which many scholars relate to his ambivalent relationship to Third Reich politics.³ The works are multilayered and speak on both literal and metaphorical levels, offering viewers striking yet ambiguous visual clues about the cultural disorientation, ethical dilemmas, and social influences that informed Beckmann’s life and self-perceptions during his time in Amsterdam after World War II.

The artist made Day and Dream upon request of Curt Valentin, the influential New York art dealer who emigrated from Berlin to New York in 1937. As an exile with connections to powerful art dealers in Nazi Germany, Valentin enjoyed the uncommon privilege of being allowed to purchase confiscated modern art from Nazi authorities for the New York gallery that he managed.⁴ Largely responsible for introducing Beckmann's paintings and other European modernist works by such artists as Fernand Léger, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Max Ernst to the American public, Valentin believed that producing multiples of a recent portfolio would further enhance the artist’s reputation with American collectors.⁵ He expressed his interest in commissioning a new portfolio in a letter to the artist dated March 8, 1946, and Beckmann accepted the offer enthusiastically: “I’m teeming with countless ideas,” he responded. “I could make a portfolio with biblical or mythological themes, a circus-theater-café series, or all of them mixed up into one.”⁶

Beckmann decided upon the latter eclectic approach, and as if to underscore the portfolio’s diverse facets and impressions, he varied his drawing technique from plate to plate. In some cases he used a fine litho pen, as in Sleeping Athlete, creating clean and smoothly defined images. In others, such as Weather-vane and Circus, he worked exclusively with crayon, producing coarser drawings that on first glance appear simple and childlike, but that upon closer examination prove rich in metaphorical content. In several cases, such as in Self Portrait, Morning, and The Fall of Man, Beckmann applied large sections of ink on the stone, a practice that resulted in intense and aggressive blackened areas on the paper that dominate the composition.⁷

The varying techniques and themes that comprise the Amsterdam portfolio exhibit a lack of cohesion that renders an examination of the portfolio in a given sequence inconsequential. Resembling a collection of free-floating ruminations on diverse facets of the artist’s post-war circumstances, the prints can be viewed repeatedly and in a variety of combinations. Day and Dream, the portfolio’s title, underscores this apparent absence of a graspable linear development. The words evoke the daydream, a state of mind in which day (reality) and dream (imagination) are tied to one another, yet are removed from the logic of conscious thought and structured time. Beckmann’s original title choice, Time-Motion, a phrase still decipherable on a paper fragment in King and Demagogue, further suggests temporal and spatial ambiguity. Initially articulated in correspondence between the artist and Valentin, and again in Beckmann’s diary entry of June 24, 1946,⁸ Time-Motion conveys both a sense of passing time and transience, two phenomena that can be attributed to Beckmann’s experiences as an exile, for whom a feeling of perpetual waiting or arrested time becomes the norm.⁹ Both titles—Day and Dream and Time-Motion—serve as a foil to the viewer’s temporal and spatial expectations—one that is reinforced graphically through the artist’s frequent rejection of linear perspective, as in Sleeping Athlete and Circus; and alienated spatial and social configurations, as in Crawling Woman and The Fall of Man.

Further complicating matters, there are aspects of this portfolio that both Beckmann and Valentin developed for purely pragmatic reasons. Aware that ninety of the hundred portfolios printed would be shipped to the United States, both artist and dealer made choices for the suite that would appeal specifically to American collectors.¹⁰ The title appears in English, for example, and the cover image, published on linen, is a reproduction of Beckmann’s Globe and Shell, a 1927 drypoint etching that features a globe with North America as its focal point. Valentin selected this print, printed by Beckmann in Frankfurt twenty years before, as a means of visually referencing the artist’s future home and art market, a strategy that would help publicize to American patrons the artist’s intention of relocating to the United States.¹¹

As is often the case in Beckmann’s print suites, the portfolio begins and ends with a self-portrait, a structuring device that provides nominal directive for the narrative dislocation that follows. These portraits contrast notably from one another, and offer substantial clues about the way the artist chose to project his public persona at a given time. In a sense, the opening figure serves as a charismatic master of ceremonies who invites the viewer to engage viscerally both with the projected image of the portfolio’s creator and with the dreamlike images that follow. Here, ubiquitous scribbles and crosshatching give form to an older man’s weathered, yet distinguished face. The artist’s rigid jaw-line accentuates an unsmiling demeanor that contributes to an overall countenance of serious resolve. His clothes—the beret-like cap, a jacket and shirt open at the collar—point toward a slightly bohemian figure, who is simultaneously grounded in the comforts of the bourgeoisie. Holding a lit cigarette confidently in his left hand, the artist radiates self-assurance and sovereignty. With his gaze fixed on a point beyond the viewer, he confronts the world head-on. Other self-portraits in the series are, in stark contrast, allegorical in nature. The final plate shows, for example, a profile of Pontius Pilate clad in ancient Roman attire, but whose facial features strongly resemble those of Beckmann. As a modern stand-in for Pilate, the artist has placed himself in visual confrontation with Christ, a dynamic that may allude to Beckmann’s and other Germans’ compromised ethical position in relation to Third Reich politics.

Some of the figures that comprise Day and Dream appear, at first glance, simple and larger than life, and for this reason, encourage precise iconographical readings. Yet these figures fluctuate, just as the title suggests, between the mundane and fantastical. The artist’s propensity to fuse the topical with the strange, combined with his tendency to disrupt the viewer’s narrative expectations through distorted perspective, make it difficult to arrive at definitive interpretations. Weather-vane of Day and Dream exemplifies this ambiguity. The lithograph features a rooftop weathervane shaped in the form of a mermaid holding an arrow that points toward the ocean. Tiny sailboats are visible in the distance. Two large black ravens are perched on a horizontal bar attached to the weathervane. Photographs taken from Beckmann’s window reveal that the artist saw a similar rooftop weathervane from his Amsterdam studio.¹² This picturesque view likely served as a locus for the artist’s daily reflections and visualizations, while the composition, with its distant horizon line and harbor scene, more generally recalls the vast art historical tradition of Dutch seascape paintings.

The artist may have fused elements from two drawings in this print. In a diary entry dated March 28, 1946, Beckmann recorded the titles of two drawings he had just completed: “Frau mit Fischschwanz” (Woman with Fishtail) and “Pfeil und Raben” (Arrow and Raven), and it seems likely that these figures—the mermaid and the ravens perched on the weathervane—appear as one element here.¹³ This hybrid image placed within the greater context of a harbor invites rich and multifaceted readings. The fact that the wind directs the mermaid’s arrow seaward might reference Beckmann’s own much awaited journey, while the ravens, a foreboding omen in English and Central European folklore, possibly embody the artist’s fears about the future. A third bird resembling a seagull appears suspended in flight in almost direct opposition to the weathervane’s arrow. This lightly sketched avian form— visually at odds with rest of the composition—suggests a state of conflicted or arrested motion.¹⁴

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Within the context of Beckmann’s experiences as an exile in Amsterdam, several lithographs from Day and Dream reflect upon the connection between sexuality and human alienation. Morning, for example, is set in a sparse, cramped bedroom dominated by a large bed, head board, and heating pipe. At the center of the print is an image of a large, highly sexualized young woman. Seated on the bed with her legs parted in the direction of the viewer, she wears a negligee, which, due to its substantial size and massive concentration of black ink, is the focal point of the picture. The woman, possibly a prostitute, wears a Dutch cap and clogs, a clear reference to Beckmann’s host country. Leaning casually against a pile of pillows she strokes a black cat, a recurring motif in Beckmann’s oeuvre that is frequently associated with female sexuality.¹⁵ She has placed her right hand over her crotch in a modest gesture that seems to contradict her otherwise exhibitionist posture.

A puzzling figure kneeling in the background introduces a further element of uncertainty into the composition. Possessing both masculine and feminine characteristics— the hands are bulky and shoulders broad, yet the hair is pulled back into a bun—this person is advanced in years. Clad in a formless, long-sleeved robe or dress, the figure is poised to offer the young woman a glass of water or wine. The left hand clutches a bottle, the slender form of which runs parallel to the lines of the young woman’s torso, taking on a phallic connotation. Is it the woman’s partner who is marginalized in the composition’s background? Or does this figure’s neutralizing presence and scrutinizing gaze convey a moral judgment about the woman’s openly sexual behavior?

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Other plates from Day and Dream reveal the artist’s recollections of everyday encounters with Amsterdam friends and acquaintances, as well as recapitulations of memorable shows by local circus and Varieté performers, spectacles that fascinated the artist throughout his life.¹⁶ Circus revisits subject matter from print portfolios and paintings made by Beckmann in Germany during the 1920s.¹⁷ In 1921, for example, the artist published Jahrmarkt (Annual Fair), a portfolio of ten drypoint etchings, focusing on circus performers— clowns, tall and strong men, acrobats, and tightrope walkers—both on stage and behind the scenes. In similar thematic vein, a clown and cyclist inhabit the space of the 1946 lithograph Circus, yet they are portrayed within the context of Beckmann’s Amsterdam experiences, and an air of violence permeates the scene.

In the right section of the print, the facial features of a tall, skinny jester wearing a clown’s hat recall those of the artist (as in the depiction of Pilate in the final plate). Crossing his arms over his chest, the man is seated with splayed legs on a drum or stool. Before him on the ground lies a nude woman with her arms tied behind her back and a cloth fastened around her mouth, a recurring image denoting captivity in Beckmann’s oeuvre.¹⁸ The muscular man crouching behind her, possibly her partner, wears only shorts and is also bound in handcuffs. On the ground beneath them is a variety show program, the existence of which presents captivity and physical torment—two commonplace forms of wartime subjugation—as a kind of a grotesque circus or variety show.

In a diary entry dated May 11, 1946, Beckmann referred to this lithograph as “Der Sieger,” or “The Victor,” and scribbled Zirkusszene (Circus Scene) in parentheses.¹⁹ Although “Der Sieger” is not listed as the title in the portfolio’s table of contents, the artist’s mention of the word in his diary helps shed light on this puzzling work. The victor quite possibly refers to the clown or Beckmann himself, who appears to survey the subjugation of his fellow humans in the foreground with a curious mixture of concern and critical detachment. Featured in the upper left section is a second figure, a bespectacled gentleman bicycle rider who hauls an oversized bottle of milk on his handlebars. Sources close to the artist have identified the bicyclist as the Beckmann’s milkman, who was imprisoned during the war for engaging in underground activities against the Nazis. Through Beckmann’s direct appeal to the Gestapo, the man was released unharmed.²⁰ This momentous event appears to have served as a catalyst for the artist’s reflections on his personal role as a dubious victor or liberator in wartime Europe. While a definitive meaning of Circus remains elusive, Beckmann’s compelling juxtaposition of real and fictional characters takes us back to the portfolio’s overarching theme: the interchangeability between day (reality) and dream (illusion).