MONTREAL — The title says it all.
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts presents its new exhibition "Rogue Cabaret: The Terrifying and Beautiful World of Otto Dix."
The exhibit delivers on both counts.
"Rouge Cabaret" is the first North America major retrospective on the life and work of the German-born Dix. The exhibition features 220 paintings and sketches, 40 of which are considered "very rare, fragile," said tour guide Doris Manzo. Thematically and chronologically displayed, topics cover "The Trenches," "The Street," "The Brothel," "The Gallery," "The Exhibition" and "The Lake."
Most of the works were painted by Dix during the German Weimer era between World War I and the rise of the Nazi party and the beginning of World War II.
"The exhibit encompasses a very turbulent time," Manzo said. "Germany was experiencing economic, political and social bedlam. There were strikes and revolts. It was a very unstable atmosphere."
An atmosphere rife for Dix to paint things as he saw them.
"His works, his portraits, his nudes were never idealized," Manzo said. "He presented things as they were. He painted real."
REALISM
Opening the exhibition is "The Trenches," which depicts the horrors painted by Dix as a young soldier in the German army during World War I.
"I studied war closely," Dix is quoted saying in the exhibit text. "It must be represented realistically so that it is understood. The artist works so that others can see that such a thing existed."
The artist sketched 50 drawings of the war's atrocities and sent them back home to his girlfriend, Manzo said. Most of the portraits, a decade later titled "Der Kreig," are on display.
"Dix was haunted by what he saw around him," Manzo said. "He used his art as a form of exorcism."
The war themes show soldier as vampire in some cases, the devastation of the landscape and vivid illustrations of soldiers who suffered from traumatic life-altering facial war wounds.
A devastating German defeat and postwar conditions led to "The Street," where Dix found inspiration in the everyday.
"There is so much that is strange in what surrounds us that there is no reason to use or seek out new subjects," Dix has written.
"He painted society as he saw it," Manzo said. Here, subjects include beggars and two young German children from a working-class German neighborhood.
The brothel became another artistic muse for Dix. In the exhibit, a series of stylized nudes show faces that offer a haunting mix of pride and empathy.
"He always painted these women as anxious and vulnerable but always with a touch of humanity," Manzo said.
HIDDEN MESSAGES
"The Gallery" offers a case study in portraiture.
"Dix was considered the most important portraitist of the Weimer era," Manzo said. "But he didn't paint anyone he wasn't interested in."
Local bankers, poets and lawyers all received the Dix artistic treatment.
Rounding out the visit, the theme "The Lake" tells of Dix's interpretation of the German landscape with the arrival of the Nazi regime. Dix was one of many German artists whose works were deemed "degenerate" in the eyes of the Nazis, and soon he lost his job as professor at Dresden Academy, says the text. In the series, hidden messages abound.
In the 1935 oil "Randegg in the Snow with Ravens," a seemingly innocent looking winter landscape is interrupted with a more ominous forecast of a Germany to come. A dark sky, a cold blanket of snow and the ravens' ill omen sets the scene.
Dix managed to survive being drafted into the German army in 1944 at the age of 53 and a period as a prisoner of war in France. He lived the last two-and-a-half decades of his life in Germany and continued to paint. He died in 1969.
"Rouge Cabaret" continues through Jan. 2.
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is at 1379 Sherbrooke St. W. Hours are from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday to Friday and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekends. The temporary gallery is also open until 9 p.m. Wednesday through Friday. Admission to "Rouge Cabaret" costs $15 for adults, $10 for seniors, $7.50 for students, and it's free for children 12 and under. Adult and senior admission costs $7.50 from 5 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesdays. Admission to the permanent collection is free. Call (514) 285-2000 or visit www.mmfa.qc.ca. Find ticket information at: http://www.mmfa.qc.ca/en/ren seignements/droits_entree.sn.
Steve Howell is the author of Montreal Essential Guide, a Sutro Media iPhone travel app available at iTunes.com.
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