Dan Byers, Director of the Carpenter Center, Harvard University
Tamar met Dan when she was a worshipful high school freshman and he was (to her) an übercool junior who was not only the arts editor of Thoughtprints, the school's art/lit mag, but also spent his free time in the fine art studio, bending the charcoal like Beckmann. Now he's the Director of the Carpenter Center of Visual Arts at Harvard University, she's an art history podcaster, and they reconnected in the Busch-Reisinger galleries in front of Beckmann's "Self-Portrait in a Tuxedo" from 1927 to talk about self-portraiture, self-evolution, and the limitations of peaking in high school.
[00:17] - Describing the painting.
[02:35] - What drew Dan to the painting as a teenager.
[06:16] - The ephemera of the cigarette.
[08:17] - Self-portraits in high school.
[09:25] - Drawing in thick, expressive lines.
[11:35] - The self-portrait that doesn't need our validation.
[15:19] - Beckmann isn’t Egon Schiele
[18:58] - Dan's evolving relationship with this painting.
[21:58] - Thoughtprints!
Music used:
The Blue Dot Sessions, "Greyleaf Willow"
