DIX

The objectivistStaging the world as a play"It is my wish to come very close, strikingly close, to the times in whichwe live, without submitting to artistic dogma...I need the connection tothe world of senses, the courage to portray ugliness, life as it comes." -Otto DixIn the 1920s, Otto Dix was the artist of Neue Sachlichkeit, the NewObjectivity, par excellence. Painting in a very realistic, almostphotographic style, he chose as subjects the poverty, violence, death, andwar that he experienced as a soldier in World War I. After this terribleexperience, he painted the famous triptych The War.Dix staged the world as a play, a grotesque farce. But the form he chose todo so was based on the classical canon of beauty. Dix lived his life andserved art, for he adhered to the age-old rule that the American painter AdReinhardt put in a nutshell: "Life is life, and art is art."