Lake Forest: coincidence; coasting

 

The painting is ‘The Sinking of the Titanic’ by Max Beckmann, the German Expressionist painter, who left Germany with the rise in Nazism, first to Amsterdam and eventually to the United States.  For a few years he taught at Washington University in St. Louis and many of his paintings are in the St. Louis Museum of Art.  I remember being impressed by them when I visited the museum as a teenager.  I did not remember this one.  It is not really representative of his work, which became increasingly violent in response to his times.  Carol and I happened to see it last week at the museum and I read yesterday in 1913:  The Year Before the Storm, a clever and entertaining book recording month by month some of the events of interest of that year, such as that in January a young Hitler and a young Stalin probably passed one another unknowingly while strolling in the Schonbrunn Castle Park in Vienna.  Also that Max Beckmann completed ‘The Sinking of the Titanic’ that month.  An odd coincidence to read mention of the painting only a few days after seeing it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Beckmann

As mentioned in the article, Beckmann completed a great many self-portraits.  Perhaps that is one of the reasons I have written one.

About this time tomorrow I should be walking into our condo overlooking Skull Creek and be on water’s edge beyond the continent.  I have only been away for less than six weeks, but it seems longer.