Skizze, "Der Tod und die Götter" (Sketch of "Death and the Gods") [p. 24] 

Curator: This page, torn from Max Beckmann’s sketchbook, bears the tentative title "Der Tod und die Götter" or, "Death and the Gods." Rendered with charcoal and ink, it's…well, what do you make of it? Editor: Chaotic. And heavy. All these interwoven, almost frantic lines pressing down…It feels like a struggle to contain something, a raw outburst more than a defined image. Curator: Precisely! These rapid lines and erasures reveal the artist wrestling with an idea, not quite formed. He is known to imbue his figures with weighty symbolism. Think of how often ancient cultures personified death—often with gods standing by, witnessing, intervening, or sometimes indifferent. Do you see any figures emerging? Editor: There's a dense cluster in the lower part...a figure slumped or collapsed? Above it... are those more figures looming, or perhaps masked faces looking down? I can almost make out their shapes in charcoal amid the storm of lines. I wonder, is this a modern danse macabre? The hasty execution reminds me how impermanent and ungraspable the very idea of mortality can be. Curator: An insightful reading. The composition seems less about clear depiction, and more about the psychic space of contemplation, a confrontation of cosmic forces. It's fascinating how Beckmann often employs this kind of deliberate obscurity in his initial sketches as if shielding an unfolding truth. He invites the viewer to participate in that moment of formation, to decode the interplay of shadow and light as the story emerges from the void. Editor: A raw glimpse into the artist's processing of huge, unanswerable questions, caught here like an emotional seismograph... I leave with the echoes of its heavy, unsettled mood. Curator: I agree. It also sparks reflections on how we are doomed to make sketches from the very idea of mortality as well, which is as ungraspable as smoke. Thanks for the trip!