Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, German
Portrait of the Artist (After Passing Out in a Plate of Baked Beans), 1925
Oil on canvas
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MASTERPIECE #3207
Artist info is pointed to in my comment and reply at another blog entry.
/// Kirchner was justifiably moody.
His art labeled “perverted” and “lewd,” he
by the Nazis was banned.
Driven from his homeland,
here he leaks the same hair dye as Rudy.
/// His self-portrait’s expressionist style
by the Third Reich was thought of as vile.
As “degenerate” they
put his art on display,
then destroyed what they’d worked to defile.
/// Off to Switzerland Ernst chose to run.
Then the Austrian “annex” begun.
Would the Germans invade?
Kirchner, down and dismayed,
was found shot (suicide?) by a gun.
/// Kirchner’s Head of the Painter is spooky,
but the artist was just being kooky.
Could it be that this man
had a love of Japan,
and was trying to copy Kabuki?
/// It is not very hard to discern—
to his skull he has bolted an urn.
This large gold-colored jar
will now never be far
from his thoughts and his tender concern.
/// But it’s what that gold vessel contains,
that he wants to store next to his brains.
Why that dark facial rash?
He’s allergic to ash.
They’re his mother’s cremated remains.
/// His late mother was not very kind.
For her boy, love she never could find.
And so why did he bind
her urned ashes behind
his blotched head? “Out of sight— out of mind!”