Akrobat im Handstand auf Bock (Chair Stand) [p. 19] 

Max Beckmann made this sketch of an acrobat balancing on a chair using graphite on paper. Beckmann, a German artist who lived through both World Wars, often used circus performers in his work. Circuses and fairs were cultural institutions where social conventions could be upended, at least temporarily. Here, the acrobat's feat of strength and balance might be seen as a metaphor for the social tensions in Germany during the interwar period, when traditional hierarchies were being challenged and new forms of expression were emerging. Is this figure an emblem of freedom or merely of a kind of desperate precariousness? Historical research into the cultural landscape of Weimar Germany, as well as Beckmann’s biography, help us to interpret the complex symbolism in his work. The social and institutional context in which art is made is always critical to its meaning.