“Repression and Revision in Otto Dix’s Seven Mortal Sins”

"This lecture examines an important painting by Otto Dix, one of the most famous and infamous German painters of the Weimar Republic. Dix's painting, The Seven Mortal Sins, has long been regarded as a "painting of resistance," responding unequivocally and courageously to Nazi brutality in general and to Dix's rapid marginalization in the aftermath of the Nazi takeover of German governments at all levels in early 1933. Building on the close examination of the painting and its preliminary studies and on the careful analysis of the poem by Friedrich Nietzsche that seems to serve as the picture's interpretive key, this talk will propose a different, more nuanced interpretation of the nature and limits of the painting as a critical image. It will seek to offer a more precisely historicized account of the way in which Dix's work as an artist was determined by historical events and conditions in the first unsettled months of Hitler's dictatorship."

Talk will be held in room A266 Bay 10 on the second floor of Smith Warehouse. Free and open to the public.