The Mirror of Life

[NNadir]

8. This is very true. Each time I went back to it, I saw something different. The amazing detail...

...that was really startling and disconcerting, was the two naked men in the green clearing, one stomping the other. The man under assault is bleeding in a way you cannot see here.

I would imagine that Koerner painting this in 1946, when the murder of his family must have been very raw, was powerfully horrified by human brutality.

That detail blew my mind, along with the obvious shock on the face of the man looking out in profile; it may be the artist himself. It does seem to me that more than anything else, he is focused on those two naked men, one stomping the other to death.

I don't know whether the Whitney keeps this painting on permanent display. I hope they do, since I hope to go back to see it again.

The Modern often takes Max Beckmann's triptych Departure off display - another German painting about human horror - which bugs me to no end.

I last saw it at the wonderful Beckmann retrospective across town at the Met last Christmas. It's another painting at which one could spend hours. I have spent hours at it.