reference by using himself, his wife, and his son as the models for the
three family members. The stilted angularity of the figures and the
roughness of the paint surface contribute to the image’s savageness. In
addition, the artist’s treatment of forms and space reflects the world’s
violence. Objects seem dislocated and contorted, and the space ap-
pears buckled and illogical. For example, the woman’s hands are
bound to the window that opens from the room’s back wall, but her
body appears to hang vertically, rather than lying across the plane of
the intervening table.
OTTO DIX The third artist most closely associated with Neue
Sachlichkeit was Otto Dix(1891–1959). Having served as both a
machine gunner and an aerial observer, Dix was well acquainted
with war’s effects. Like Grosz, he initially tried to find redeeming
value in the apocalyptic event: “The war was a horrible thing, but
there was something tremendous about it, too.... You have to have
seen human beings in this unleashed state to know what human na-
ture is....I need to experience all the depths of life for myself, that’s
why I go out, and that’s why I volunteered.”^28 This idea of experienc-
ing the “depths of life” stemmed from Dix’s interest in the philoso-
phy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). In particular, Dix avidly
read Nietzsche’s The Joyous Science,deriving from it a belief in life’s
cyclical nature—procreation and death, building up and tearing
down, and growth and decay.
As the war progressed, however, Dix’s faith in the potential im-
provement of society dissipated, and he began to produce unflinch-
ingly direct and provocative artworks. His Der Krieg (The War;
FIG. 35-44) vividly captures the panoramic devastation that war in-
flicts, both on the terrain and on humans. In the left panel, armed and
uniformed soldiers march off into the distance. Dix graphically dis-
played the horrific results in the center and right panels, where man-
gled bodies, many riddled with bullet holes, are scattered throughout
the eerily lit apocalyptic landscape. As if to emphasize the intensely per-
sonal nature of this scene, the artist painted himself into the right panel
as the ghostly but determined soldier who drags a comrade to safety. In
the bottom panel, in a coffinlike bunker, lie soldiers asleep—or perhaps
dead. Dix significantly chose to present this sequence of images in a
triptych format, and the work recalls triptychs such as Matthias
Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece (FIG. 23-2). However, Dix’s work pre-
sents a bleaker outlook than that piece: The hope of salvation extended
to viewers of the Isenheim Altarpiece through Christ’s eventual Resur-
rection is absent from Der Krieg.Like his fellow Neue Sachlichkeit
artists, Dix felt compelled to lay bare the realities of his time, which the
war’s violence dominated. Even years later, Dix still maintained:
You have to see things the way they are. You have to be able to say
yes to the human manifestations that exist and will always exist.
That doesn’t mean saying yes to war, but to a fate that approaches
you under certain conditions and in which you have to prove your-
self. Abnormal situations bring out all the depravity, the bestiality of
human beings....I portrayed states, states that the war brought
about, and the results of war, as states.^29942 Chapter 35 EUROPE AND AMERICA, 1900 TO 194535-44Otto Dix,Der Krieg (The War), 1929–1932. Oil and tempera on wood, 6 81 – 3 13 43 – 4 . Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Gemäldegalerie
Neue Meister, Dresden.
In this triptych recalling earlier altarpieces, Dix captured the panoramic devastation that war inflicts on the terrain and on humans. He depicted
himself as a soldier dragging a comrade to safety.1 ft.