UMMA Art Pick: Comments 32

Nicholas Delbanco
Robert Frost Distinguished University Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Michigan

Begin the Beguine was completed in September, 1946, the year before Max Beckmann came to America, and the dance here delineated—with its frozen dynamic and arrested fluidity—has at least in part to do with emigration. They should be stepping to the music of Kurt Weill, not Cole Porter; they look resolutely away from and not at each other. What birds of paradise are these; does blood festoon their beaks?

It is all a welter of crisscrossing angles and interlocked limbs: how to know if they begin or conclude this passionate romp; are they teaching or learning its steps?

Apoorvaa Joshi Ann Arbor, MI

T. Rojas Ann Arbor, MI

Just something about the colors and motion here--lots going on, but not so much that one is overwhelmed. Makes you want to stop and take it in.

John Dickinson Center Line, Michigan

Mark Ann Arbor

Jon Van Eck Ann Arbor

The German Expressionist Movement for me reflects the optimism and chaos of the period between the two world wars. These paintings torture you with their message and their beauty.

Richard Rand Williamstown, Massachusetts

I've always loved Beckmann's masterpiece for its combination of pictorial beauty and sheer weirdness. It's simultaneously a profoundly personal work for the artist and an image that can inspire any number of interpretations in viewers today.

Beenish Ahmed Ann Arbor, MI

feathers.

dufflbag

John Cynar  Ann Arbor, MI

David Fulmer  Ann Arbor MI

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