William Kentridge on Max Beckmann’s 1938 Painting ‘Death (Tod)’

Why It Matters

The discussion shows how layered, ambiguous art like Beckmann’s demands active, interdisciplinary interpretation, shaping curatorial and scholarly approaches to complex visual histories.

Key Takeaways

• Beckmann's "Death" is a reversible, perspective‑shifting, complex tableau
• Choir and figures blur heaven‑hell, angel‑devil boundaries in painting
• Kentridge links imagery to Michelangelo, Bacon, Bosch, and Weimar icons
• The painting functions like a theatrical set with mutable flats
• Viewer becomes audience, navigating riddles and unstable visual narratives

Summary

William Kentridge examines Max Beckmann’s 1938 canvas “Death (Tod)”, painted as the German artist fled Nazi persecution and after the death of fellow expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. He notes Beckmann’s interest in Gnosticism but focuses on the painting’s visual puzzles.

Kentridge argues the work is deliberately unstable—a reversible picture where the choir can appear on the floor or hanging from the ceiling, and heaven and hell swap places. The central figure with trumpet, red phallus and wings oscillates between angelic and demonic, underscoring the theme of ambiguity.

He draws connections to Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, Francis Bacon’s grotesque teeth, Josephine Baker’s Weimar glamour, Degas‑like domestic moments, Bosch‑style fish, Memling’s green‑tinged skin, and even the Australian children’s book “The Magic Pudding”. These associations, though not Beckmann’s intent, illustrate the painting’s capacity to generate endless cultural riddles.

By treating the canvas as a theatrical set with shifting flats and footlights, Beckmann invites viewers to become participants in a staged narrative. The analysis suggests that such multilayered, perspective‑fluid works demand active, interdisciplinary reading, a lesson for curators, scholars, and audiences confronting complex visual histories.

Original Description

Watch a new short film by William Kentridge in which he anatomizes Max Beckmann’s magisterial and mysterious 1938 painting ‘Death (Tod)’, on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition “Max Beckmann” at Hauser & Wirth Basel. Beckmann’s meditation on mortality interests Kentridge, he says, in part because it is “a reversal picture. One is not certain what it top and what is bottom, what is heaven and what is hell.”

“Max Beckmann” is on view at Hauser & Wirth Basel from 4 June through 11 July 2026.

William Kentridge is internationally acclaimed for his artworks, theater and opera productions. He combines drawing and erasing, tearing, gestural painting, collage, weaving, casting, writing, film, performance, music, theater and collaborative practices to create works of art that are grounded in politics, science, literature and history.

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Hauser & Wirth is an international contemporary and modern art gallery with spaces in Zurich, London, Somerset, New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, St. Moritz, Monaco, Menorca, Paris and Basel.

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