Der Tank 1940

Editor: This is “Der Tank,” created in 1940 by Wols, using mixed media, including watercolor and gouache. It's... unusual. I'm struck by how unsettling the biomorphic forms feel. What do you make of it? Curator: Given the historical context, 1940, the title "The Tank" resonates powerfully. This wasn’t just any year; it was a year of immense political and military upheaval. Seeing those vaguely militaristic shapes...Do you think the "tank" here is a literal representation or something more symbolic? Editor: Symbolic, definitely. It feels like a psychological landscape, maybe a commentary on the anxieties of wartime. Curator: Precisely. Wols was a German artist living in France at the time, an outsider facing potential internment. Consider the implications of that positioning. How might his personal anxieties about displacement and persecution manifest in a work like this? Note how the chaotic lines and distorted forms seem to reject traditional notions of beauty and order. It mirrors the fracturing of society happening around him, wouldn't you agree? Editor: That makes a lot of sense. The way the forms seem to be collapsing in on themselves reinforces that idea of societal fracture. Curator: And what about the choice of materials? Watercolor and gouache often evoke fragility. In this historical setting, I cannot help to consider this a deliberate artistic choice. Editor: I see what you mean. Thinking about the title and the year it was created, the "fragility" of the watercolor serves to reinforce a feeling of precariousness. I'll never look at a Wols the same way again.