Otto Dix – The Spectre of Decadence

Serious Topics

A talk by Elsa De Smet as part of the “Introduction to Art History” series, which each month focuses on an artist, a work, a movement or a school of thought that has shaped art history. In his painting Souvenirs de la galerie des glaces à Bruxelles (1920), the Expressionist and Dada painter Otto Dix (1891–1969) depicts the scandalous nature of war: an apoplectic general, half man and half automaton, is shown drinking champagne and flirting with a voluptuous woman. Viewpoints fragment in a nauseating intoxication. The painting is modern through its visual elements as much as it is contemporary in its subject matter.