Self Portrait as a Soldier 1915
Oil on canvas, 69 x 61 cm
Royal Academy, London
June 2003
The show focused on his work between 1908 and 1918 and concentrated in particular on his depiction of street scenes in Berlin and how he used these as a mirror of human psychology. Although some of these works are more melancholic than celebratory I have chosen the last painting in the exhibition and the one that made the biggest impact on me.
In 1915 Kirchner volunteered for the army as an artilleryman in order to avoid being drafted as an infantryman in the trenches, but his deepening personal crisis led to a physical and psychological breakdown. It was while he was recuperating at a Swiss sanatorium that he painted this haunting graphic self portrait.
Thin and gaunt, he stares out of the canvas with an unfocussed gaze, cigarette dangling from his lips and the bloodied gangrenous stump of his painting hand, raised for all to see.
The paint is applied evenly with powerful expressive brushstrokes that are short cross hatching and look very rapid in their execution. His flesh tones are a sickly yellow and outlined in black. The greens in the background contrast and emphasise the strength and variety of vivid reds.
The space in the painting is very claustrophobic, accentuated by the sharp converging diagonals, but it is his imaginary amputation that is the most striking metaphor for loss. He is clearly expressing his concern for his creativity, artistic vision, and inspiration, and perhaps even his ability to paint. The nude woman in the background seems to refer to his pre-war work and is perhaps an additional metaphor representing something that is now “behind him” or perhaps specifically the loss of his potency and manhood.
Fittingly it was the final painting in the exhibition, as although he continued to work after 1915, his painting, perhaps understandably, lacked the expressive resonance of his images of pre-war life in Berlin.
©blackdog 2009
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