The Night

In a cramped, tilting room intruders torture a family - a man is hanged and his arm wrenched, a woman bound, the space a knot of violence, contorted limbs, and pain. Max Beckmann painted the Night in the chaotic aftermath of the First World War and the German revolution, channeling the era's brutality into a claustrophobic, splintered scene. Now in Dusseldorf, it is a landmark of New Objectivity - an unflinching image of a society given over to cruelty and disorder, the home invaded, the modern world reduced to senseless, casual savagery.