| writings: the diaries of otto dix |
| I have been offered a teaching job. This is something I said I would never do. Why? Because I dont think you can teach and paint. Teaching is like anything else: you have to put something into it to get something out of it. I have only so much energy at my disposal which I prefer to apply to my work. Also: A good teacher has patience. This is a gene nowhere apparent at my birth. My father is the worlds most impatient human being. I once saw him enter a pharmacy to buy aspirin and--discovering an actual line of 3 people--which was 3 too many--he exited the pharmacy and walked down the street and into a jewelry store and bought a gold watch. Why did he do this?. Because he needed to kill some time until the line at the pharmacy disappeared and buying a gold watch was the thing that occurred to him. But I am in a spot. I need a job. I have no money. I live like a student. Its OK when you are a student. But I am 33. At 33 I still dont know from one month to the next whether I will be making the rent. It wears you down. It is difficult to work under these conditions. The one thing you need as an artist is peace of mind. I am ready for a little security and some small comforts of life. The institution is the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden. This is a good school. It has a distinguished history. Its so distinguished I cant recall a single decent painter who studied there. Maybe Bocklin. But this is a quibble. I was recommended by Max Hermann-Niesse. The school is aware of its stuffy rep and the need to hire some people with a more unconventional style. There was concern that in my case the work might be excessively repulsive but Hermann-Neisse was able to assure them this was a non-issue. I will be teaching life drawing. Life drawing is based on anatomy and there is not much room for propaganda here. A bone is a bone. Also they need someone of unimpeachable moral character. It was in this dept that my predecessor fell short. This was Herr Frank. Herr Frank was young, good looking and horny. (With Herr Frank a bone was a boner) I like Dresden. Ive had several shows there. Its boring but this can be a plus. I will get more work done. Also I need a break from Berlin--and this whole business with Martha and Hans. I have made my decision: I will take the job Yesterday I started teaching. I walked into class and there they were. I have 25 students. The first thought to occur was that my reputation was good for 5 minutes. On the face of each was the same expression. It said: do something! I have done some preparation--notes for an outline. This I will save for later. I must put them to work. This will keep them from thinking. I deliver a short lecture. I say: I have one point I want to make. There is no such thing as a right or wrong way to draw. Children are wonderful artists. Why? Because they have no fear. They just draw. They do it because its fun. And it should be fun for you. In fact I insist on this. Also: do not concern yourself with the work of your fellow painters. This has nothing to do with you. In painting as in bowling there will always be someone better and worse. Never forget this. I would like to draw like Picasso--or Reubens. But I cant draw like Picasso or Reubens. So I dont torture myself over this. I forget it. Am I clear about this? I am clear. We begin. I am teaching. I have taken a break from the painting to get this class rolling. We are drawing anatomy. I like teaching this subject. I love the great anatomical draftsmen: Vesalius, Albinus, Cloquet, etc. I have them from 8-12 every morning. I give them one 20 minute break. They draw, draw, draw. They draw and complain. They moan and groan, weep, whimper and whine. Otto--this is hard! I laff. Yes--its hard! I play music to get the juices flowing. One or twice a week I will take an hour and show slides for inspiration. I show them Titian, Da Vinci, Mantegna, Raphel, Reubens, Goya, Ingres, Courbet, Picasso etc. I say to them: what is the one thing all these people have in common? They look at me. I say: They all did a lot of drawing. This teaching business could be worse. The school is beautiful. The property is huge. Its a pocket Versailles. It was formerly the estate of some noble creature who pissed away the family inheritance. There is a fabulous garden, tennis courts, swimming pool, arboretum--the works. There is a gym with a steam room, a cinema, a cafeteria, etc. There is a fabulous art library. There is a stable. Myself on a horse. I like this idea. There is one problem with this job--meetings. There are meetings, meetings, meetings. What do we meet about? We meet about things like eating in class. We meet about chlorine poisoning. Several of the students have complained about the chlorine level in the pool. We meet about vine charcoal. There is a vine charcoal crises. The price of vine charcoal has taken a huge jump. We must be more sparing in our use of this item. Any piece of vine charcoal exceeding 5cm in length still has some life in it and should not be discarded. These are lonely people. They are lonely or they are bored. I could be painting a masterpiece. My colleagues are a mixed bag. There is Herr von Stuck--the chairman of the dept. Herr von Stuck is a painter. His specialty is the nude. He has been painting nudes for 45 years. If you paint one nude a week for 45 years it adds up to 2340 nudes. He has a show once a year or once every two years and sells half a dozen paintings. I visited his studio one day--most of which serves as storage for paintings. He said: Ive got too much product here. There is Albert the ceramist. What is it about ceramists? They are always happy. It has something to do with covering yourself with mud. There is Wilma the photographer I would love to bang. There is Tony. Tony is a sculptor. Sculptors are a strange breed. They have one thought: space. This guy is a character. He was born in Italy and raised in France. He speaks 9 languages. He speaks: Italian, French, German, English, Spanish, Serbo-Croatian, Polish and Russian. His German is flawless. Every time I talk to him I get a different story. He is an actor and has written some scripts. He was a model. He was the director of a funeral parlor. After the funeral he would wait a week and then return with the grave/diggers and unearth the corpse and remove it from the coffin which they replaced with a wood box and reburied the stiff and took the original coffin back to clean up and return to inventory. He is a magician. He does shows for kids. He does card tricks and the exploding chicken routine. He says the kids go wild over this one. I say: a live chicken--or a dead chicken? He says: what would be the point of blowing up a dead chicken? He is 29. I say: Tony--you would have to be 73 to do half these things. But I like him. He is a Nazi. I made the mistake of talking to him about Hitler. Asking a Nazi about Hitler is like asking one of the apostles about Jesus Christ. You cant shut them up. Its Hitler, Hitler, Hitler. Hitler has recently been released from Jail. He served 9 months. It seems a light sentence for trying to overthrow the state. While doing this time he was established in a private suite, was allowed unlimited visiting privileges, during which he was provided with an endless supply of goodies in the form of food, clothes, books, office supplies, etc. He had a cellmate, Rudolph Hess, also convicted in the revolt, who served him as secretary while he dictated a book. Tony studied with Maillol. There are some great Maillol stories. At the age of 80 he was still banging models--or trying to. He had a nag of a wife constantly trying to thwart him in this activity. This is a theme that has always interested me: the old man banging the young woman. There are several theories about this. Some claim it is a way of cheating death. I say it is pussy. Tony runs things down for me--who to avoid and who to butter up. I am reminded of something Mother Ey once said: you have to make the right enemies. There are three sins: banging students, losing students, coming to school drunk. The major sin is losing students. Keep the students happy and you will be forgiven many indiscretions. The student banging issue is ambiguous. Tonys wife is a former student. But she wasnt his student. You cant bang your own student. They must be out of your class first I think I have it. I decide not to bang anybody. I am teaching. The student/teacher relationship is interesting. Its an intimate relationship. Basically they are children. There is a look they get you only see one other time--when someone is in love with you. It is a look of trust and intense pleasure. I have some good students. There is some talent here. But mostly its the usual. It is the fear of making mistakes. They are too timid. I am determined to overcome this behaviour. I am relentless on this issue. I say it over and over. I hammer at them: there is no such thing as a mistake. Failure is a word that doesnt concern you at this point. This isnt brain surgery. I want you to make mistakes. This is why you are here. Its how you learn. You make a drawing and if it sucks you throw it out and start over. If that one sucks you throw it out and do another. Etc, etc. The important thing is to produce work that has life to it. How this is done I dont care. Draw with your left hand. Thats right. In fact we will do this now. Remember when I said: a mistake executed with authority will always look good? Remember when I said: stop thinking. You/re still doing this. You/re thinking too much! Just draw! Now I am rolling. I have worked myself into a fury. I scream and screech and storm and shout and rant and rave. They give me these funny looks. They say: Otto--dont be mad. IM NOT MAD! *for previous installments and an intro to the book go to: |
| *installment 8: dix in the classroom |
| 1925-1928 This was a productive period for Dix. He moved to a larger studio. Here he painted an important work--a war triptych. The following year--1926-- he had a one man show with Mother Ey. His work came to the attention of a critic named Karl Kraus who wrote for Die Sturm--the most influential of all the magazines of this period. Kraus had started out as a painter. His subject of choice was the young nude 14 years of age. In 1920 he was arrested and tried on a morals charge. He was convicted and served 7 months. It was Kraus who coined the term Neue Sachlickeit--the New Objectivity. Dix was a prominent member of this group which also included Christian Schad, Georg Schrimpf, George Grosz. There were 2 ways by which a painting in the Neue Sachlickeit style could be identified. A scrupulous and obsessive attention to detail. No attempt was made on the part of the painter to provide a point of view. There was no point of view. The point of view was provided by the viewer. The French poet Verlaine had said: all art is propaganda. The Neue Sachlickeit painters took exception to this statement. Dix personal life had its ups and downs. He entered into an affair with Martha Koch. Martha Koch had mixed feelings about this situation. She and Koch had two children. Hans Koch was no help. He was indecisive. He continued to see the sister/in/law. By the end of 1927 nothing had been resolved. Politically the Nazis continued to make strides. Hitler was out of jail and had resumed leadership. Being convicted of treason had not dimmed his appeal--it added to it. He had written an autobiography--Mein Kampf--which was enjoying a huge success . There was some new blood. Goring joined up in 1924. Next to Hitler it is Goring who stands out as the most interesting of the early party memebers. There were many sides to the character of Goring. He was a war hero. He was a fighter pilot in the first world war and received Germanys highest military honor--the pour le merite. He was a social animal. He had great gifts in this dept. The Nazis were not known for being free spirits. Goring was different. He enjoyed himself. He had charm. He was funny. He liked people. He was a ham. He resembled Hitler in one way: he was a con man. Hitler was the con man of con men and Goring was not far behind. Following the war he did a little barnstorming here and here flying stunts and then tied on as a salesman for an aviation parts supply co. He married a Swedish woman--an aristocrat. Goring had many gifts but the one that most stood out was a taste for good living. His wifes family had good business connections in Sweden and Germany and he wasted little time exploiting these contacts. Hitler was able to put all this to good use. What the party was in desperate need of most at this time was money. Goring was put in charge of this dept. |
| next month: meeting picasso |