Dancing Bar in Baden-Baden 1923

Max Beckmann made this painting, Dancing Bar in Baden-Baden, with oils, and you can just tell it was a physical process. You can see how the characters have been built up with layers of paint. It's like Beckmann is trying to show us a scene bursting at the seams, this pressure cooker of bodies in a bar, a haze of glances and touches, all rendered with a real tangible sense of weight. It feels like the characters are all almost fighting for space in the scene, which makes you notice the details, like that guy with the cigarette at the bottom corner. He seems like he is trying to ignore all the dancing. The paint is thick, and the colours are moody, all adding to this overall sense of claustrophobia. Beckmann’s work often carries this kind of intensity, a kind of raw honesty about the human condition that you can see in the work of Kirchner. The figures are not idealized but rendered in all their messy, complicated glory. And that’s something that keeps me coming back to his work.