Brother and sister 1933

Max Beckmann made this painting, titled *Brother and Sister,* with oil on canvas. The painting is all edges and flat planes of color, which makes it feel like you're peering into some kind of otherworldly diorama. Beckmann has this way of making paint feel almost carved. You can see it in the sister's hair, which is solid and sculptural, like a big hunk of butter. The brother’s hands are built up from a mass of thick pigment, and his face is scrubbed in with thin strokes of color, so the surface has this unpredictable texture. The black sword is a dark, heavy presence, but it also reminds me a little of Philip Guston’s late paintings, the way he would find something monstrous in the everyday. Like Guston, Beckmann knows that paintings don’t need to be neat or literal to be meaningful, and the ambiguity is part of the point.