Vanitas and the dialectical image in the art of Otto Dix

Otto Dix, known for his graphic depictions of war and his critical images of Weimar society, also produced works derived from motifs popularized in the Northern Renaissance. He used the Renaissance subjects, particularly the vanitas motif, to produce dialectical images of admonition. This essay examines two such paintings -- Girl in Front of a Mirror (1921) and Vanitas (1932) -- which serve as bookends to his Weimar era oeuvre. Dix visually aligns his depictions with that of his sixteenth-century predecessor, Hans Baldung Grien. Comparisons between the two Dix paintings and works by Baldung demonstrate how Dix employs Northern Renaissance iconography, which anchor his art firmly in the past. However, by doing so, the paintings resonate with the modern exhortation of his contemporary, Walter Benjamin, who advocated a new historical materialism. The goal of Benjamin's method of historical materialism was to bring the present into a critical state by means of a dialectical image formed by fragments of the past. Dix's paintings form a constellation of the past and present, resulting in dialectical images that caution society against decadence brought forth by progress that blinds itself to the past.