Afternoon 1946

Max Beckmann made this painting, Afternoon, with oil on canvas and a palette knife, probably. The brushstrokes are pretty bold, and the colors are moody—browns, greens, grays, and purples. You can see that Beckmann built up the surface, probably shifting and changing his mind as he went. I can imagine him wrestling with the composition, trying to balance the figures and the space around them. It’s not easy making a painting like this. The artist is trying to get it right, you know? They’re pushing the paint around, scraping it off, adding more, searching for something that feels true. The heavy outline around the figures reminds me a little of Matisse. Beckmann is in conversation with all the other painters, absorbing what he sees and making it his own. Painting is always about that ongoing dialogue, where artists like Beckmann inspire us to see the world in new ways, embrace the ambiguity, and find our own voices in the mix.