Mädchenbildnis (Portrait of a Girl) [p. 9] 

Curator: Let’s explore Max Beckmann's "Mädchenbildnis (Portrait of a Girl)". It's a pencil and graphite drawing on paper. The girl seems contemplative, rendered with swift, almost frantic lines. What are your initial thoughts? Editor: The sketchiness is what jumps out. It’s raw, immediate. You can almost feel the artist's hand moving across the paper. It also feels like a study, but it makes me wonder why Beckmann chose to create the work on this specific support with these techniques? Curator: Excellent question! Consider the cost of materials in post-World War I Germany, a time of economic hardship. Beckmann may have been forced to use readily available, inexpensive materials like paper and graphite. The rapid, almost frantic lines you noticed could reflect the urgency and anxiety of the era and constraints for him to finish more works quickly and cheaply to sell, and it’s production methods were closely linked to cultural factors. How might that change how we perceive this "Portrait"? Editor: So the materials themselves tell a story of economic constraint and social pressures affecting even an established artist. I hadn't thought of it that way. Does the type of graphite, the specific paper stock influence your interpretation, as well? Curator: Absolutely. Was it mass-produced paper or something more individual? The density of the graphite lines – their thickness, darkness – these tell us about the quality of the materials, their accessibility, and the degree to which the artist might have been rationing these in a time of economic scarcity and rationing. It changes our view of Beckmann's labour to know about these constraints, it also shows the labour wasn't of high value compared to the social status we assign it now. How interesting. Editor: So, seeing the economic and social contexts, it shifts from just a portrait to an object laden with meaning about its time, about Beckmann's place in that time. Thank you.