I recently saw an exhibit on Max Beckman at the Neue Galerie. I grew up with Max Beckman’s paintings at the Saint Louis Art Museum, but never read about him with any kind of intention. I also never found myself connected to the work in any way as a teenager. I was obsessing on paintings by Missouri artists like George Caleb Bingham and Thomas Hart Benton. Though, now much older, I have found myself drawn in by Beckman’s scale and subjects. I have attempted some sketches and water colors of some of the paintings I viewed at the Neue. Learning his palette has been quite fullfilling as he really tried to find colors that though they might contrast, they bring the full picture together.
“My heart beats more for a raw, average vulgar art, which doesn’t live between sleepy fairy-tale moods and poetry but rather concedes a direct entrance to the fearful, commonplace, splendid and the average grotesque banality in life.”
— Max Beckmann
