Otto Dix: The Dancer Anita Berber 1925
Berlin, and Germany all together, must have been a never repeatable euphoric place on Earth right after World War I, for about fourteen years. That is how long the Weimar Republic lasted, which replaced the German Empire after the lost war. For those fourteen years Germans lived and enjoyed life in the fullest, but nobody enjoyed it as full as Anita Berber.
While the new democratic German government was struggling to pay back war amends to the rest of the world, the nightlife of Berlin became out of control with luring clubs and bars, and cabarets. Bright red-haired Anita danced mostly half-naked solely in a corset, performing erotic scenes and playing in silent movies. She was a well-known phenomenon in Berlin hotels, only wearing a brooch just to carry cocaine. Yes, she was an addict to all available drugs: cocaine, morphine, opium, and the mix of ether and chloroform. In addition, she was also a heavy alcoholic.
She constantly wore a monocle and way too much make up, dated men and women, insulted a king, consumed three husbands, stole sometimes, and traveled the world with her nude performances. All these things happened before her 29th birthday because after her bold, provocative nights and days, she died from tuberculosis in 1928.
During one of her tour the expressionist Otto Dix painted her famous red portrait. Dix could not have chosen a better color than red to depict her; her trademark red hair, her angled red lipstick, and her whole vivid personality shouted after the color red. Dix cleverly did not depict her in a right-in-your-face seductive manner but in a finer way. The red shade talks for itself instead.
Anita wears a turtleneck dress and her eyes are fixed on an out-of-the-picture point. She does not look at the viewer with a sexy gaze; she does not expose herself with a sexy décolleté. After knowing the earlier mentioned details of her life one would think of a much unladylike depiction would suit her better, but Dix thought otherwise.
For me, she looks fragile, tired, burned out, and much older than her twenty-six years of age. She is like a broken-down middle-aged woman who saw too much, like the painter himself, who just barely survived the war and remained affected by it for the rest of his life.
Anita is not happy. Her eyes look like they are glistening from tears. Although she luxuriated her life, she could not get happiness, and if it would not be for Otto Dix’s portrait, she soon would have disappear into gray namelessness.