Otto Dix in Detail

Painting and Precarity in the Field of Weimar Culture

Inbunden, Engelska, 2026

622 kr

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Beskrivning

How small details in the paintings of Otto Dix materialize the realities of a modern German artist. Offering a fresh look at German art during a period of extraordinary transition and precarity, James A. van Dyke focuses on overlooked but critically significant details in works completed by Otto Dix between 1919 and 1936. A small lump of paint, a monogram, an almost invisible self-portrait, the verso of a drawing, a patch of discoloration, and a web of fine cracks—van Dyke reveals such details, hidden in plain sight, as coded dialogue through which Dix addressed audiences and art-world insiders amid the combative world of cultural production in Weimar Germany. Sly, cutting, and provocative, these are the material traces of social relationships between the painter and those who represented threats to his professional ambition: an avant-garde mentor and rival, an increasingly skeptical critic, a prominent bourgeois photographer, and a local Nazi authority. Proving that small things offer insight into the big picture, this book highlights Dix’s satirical, transgressive work as nuanced and polyvocal, reflecting the complex fields of power and economics in which the field of art is located.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2026-09-02
Mått:178 x 254 x undefined mm
Vikt:454 g
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Antal sidor:304
Förlag:The University of Chicago Press
ISBN:9780226848549

Utforska kategorier

Konst: teman och motiv inom Kultur

Mer om författaren

James A. van Dyke is associate professor and director of graduate studies in art history at the University of Missouri. He is the author of Franz Radziwill and the Contradictions of German Art History, 1919–1945 and president of the Historians of German, Scandinavian, and Central European Art and Architecture. He has contributed to numerous edited collections and exhibition catalogues on German art, and his work has appeared in Art History, Oxford Art Journal, German Quarterly, New German Critique, German Studies Review, and Kunst und Politik, among others.

Recensioner i media

“Otto Dix in Detail is a fascinating study on aspects of the Dix’s oeuvre, combining a rich analysis of primary source material—letters, diaries, annotated literature, art criticism, popular press reports—with close material analysis of the artist’s paintings. Looking at Dix’s paintings from four different moments in his career spanning the interwar period, van Dyke offers the reader nuanced and exciting new ways of reconsidering well-known works. This is a powerful example of art history done well, taking the idea of surface quite literally and cutting through layers of paint to reveal the complex networks of social, political, and cultural factors that shaped an artist’s work.”

Innehållsförteckning

Introduction: Little Things in the Big PictureChapter 1. A Bit of Vulgarity: F***ing with FelixmüllerChapter 2. The Monogram as Weapon: Taking Aim at EinsteinChapter 3. Self-Portrait in a Convex Lens: Reflecting on ErfurthChapter 4. Recto and Verso: Revaluing Killinger’s ValuesConclusion: The Painter, the Policeman, and the Power of the ImageAcknowledgmentsNotesSelected BibliographyIndex