Otto Dix in Detail: Painting and Precarity in the Field of Weimar Culture

How small details in the paintings of Otto Dix materialize the realities of a modern German artist.

Offering a fresh look at German art during a period of extraordinary transition and precarity, James A. van Dyke focuses on overlooked but critically significant details in works completed by Otto Dix between 1919 and 1936. A small lump of paint, a monogram, an almost invisible self-portrait, the verso of a drawing, a patch of discoloration, and a web of fine cracks—van Dyke reveals such det...