Sinking of the Titanic 1912

Max Beckmann made this painting of the Sinking of the Titanic with oil paint, though we don’t know exactly when. The churning sea of thick, opaque paint gives me a queasy feeling. Beckmann uses dark greens and whites to build up the water, and you can see the individual strokes. It's a mess, really. And amidst the chaos, there are figures in lifeboats, their faces a mix of terror and resignation. Up above, the Titanic is a distant, glowing memory. Look at the way Beckmann renders the waves, thick swirls of paint that almost seem to swallow the figures whole. The materiality of the paint becomes the churning, relentless sea itself. Beckmann's friend, the painter, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner also used visible brushwork to heighten the emotional content of his paintings. Ultimately, this painting captures the raw, visceral experience of disaster. It reminds us that art doesn't need to be pretty, it just needs to be true.