Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery 1917

Max Beckmann’s painting "Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery" depicts a biblical scene with a muted palette of ochre, brown, and gray, punctuated by stark red details. I can imagine the artist working on this piece, carefully building up layers of paint, scraping back, and then adding more. Beckmann’s brushstrokes carry a raw emotional charge. Look at the expression on the faces, and the sharp, angular forms! I wonder what he was thinking, what he wanted to convey? The painting has a sense of unease, like a silent film, and it’s clear Beckmann was engaging with a longer history of painting, echoing German Expressionism and artists such as Otto Dix and George Grosz, while finding his own voice. It’s like artists across time are having this ongoing conversation, influencing and building on each other’s visions. I think that paintings like this stay alive because they embrace ambiguity, allowing for multiple interpretations, never settling on just one meaning.