Those eyes

The morbidly inclined Otto Dix (1891–1969), when preparing to create a series of etchings depicting the horrors on the German front during World War I, “spent hours in the pathological department of a local hospital, pouring over and drawing the mutilated remains of corpses, human organs and entrails.”¹ With a penchant for grotesquerie reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch, he was viewed by some as “a pornographer of violence.” For his part, Dix described art as a form of “exorcism.” One wonders whether demons would be conjured up rather than cast out by the subject of this painting, a specialist in “nervous diseases” who offered hypnosis therapy in his sanatorium in Dresden and was a patron of avant-garde artists. Getting the full effect of this painting requires confronting the original, now housed at the Art Galley of Ontario. The piercing, bloodshot eyes bulge with heavy, gleaming impasto, achieving a most disconcerting effect. Note the anxiety of the clenched fist; the tense, oblique stance; the rigid collar, like a restraining device; and the oddly naive quality of the flat application of paint. Except for those eyes. — Anne Marie Todkill, CMAJ

Figure. Otto Dix, Portrait of Dr. Heinrich Stadelmann, 1922. Oil on canvas, 90.8 cm x 61.0 cm. AGO, Toronto. Anonymous gift, 1969, donated by the Ontario Heritage Foundation, 1988. Photo by: Carlo Catenazzi, Art Gallery of Ontario