The Sinking of the Titanic
1913 · Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint Louis), Saint Louis
Beckmann painted the disaster a year after it happened, borrowing Géricault's raft, and it now reads as a rehearsal for the war.
★ 4.8
The Art canon
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Every work chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
Descent from the Cross (Beckmann)
1917 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Beckmann came out of the war traumatized and painted a Christ so emaciated and angular that no consolation survives the picture.
★ 5.2
Self-Portrait with a Cigarette
1923 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Beckmann had spent the war as a medical orderly, and he looks out of the shadows here like a man finished being surprised.
★ 5.6
Eclipse of the Sun
1926 · Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington NY
A headless official takes advice from an industrialist, a blinkered donkey listens above, and a dollar sign has blotted out the sun.
★ 6.3
The Night
1919 · Kunstsammlung, Dusseldorf
A family is tortured in a room too small for it, painted in Germany in 1919 with the war and the revolution just finished.
★ 7.2