Ze Germans Are Coming!
I’ve been manipulated into the world of German art by an unsuspecting guide. Who would have thought that I will walk away from the household Impressionists with such ease and confidence of never coming back. Even my charmingly familiar comfort-food-like Mario Vargas Llosa granted one of his main characters deliciously unhealthy obsession with Egon Schiele.
Otto Dix, Schiele’s contemporary, is yet another one of my newly found loves.
The Dancer Anita Berber, 1925. Oil and tempera on plywood.
Anita Berber (1899-1928) was immensely famous in 1920s Berlin - for reasons not acknowledged in polite society. She danced (nude) in nightclubs, seduced a wide swath of the the population (both male and female), appeared (also frequently nude) in soft porn silent films, drank (on the average) one bottle of cognac per day, married three times, was addicted to cocaine and opium, was never seen in public without heavy make-up, talked incessantly, lied like a rug and, predictably, died at an early age.
Incredibly, given her notoriety, almost no one in the present day would have heard of Anita Berber were it not for this Otto Dix portrait. The artist was never huge on using the color red, but did so here for his friend to eye-popping effect. It is the red of Venus, the red of rubies and we are nearly physically assaulted with her sexual power - even on canvas, even 80+ years after the fact.
She would look so well in my bedroom.