Envy/Memories of a Glass House in Brussels
Neither subject of this painting is depicted very glamorously; the woman is not depicted as glowing and desirable, but older (to judge by her hands and one weary eye), sickly pale, and saggy. Meanwhile the man is alarmingly red (implying drunkenness), sports ears half the size of his head, and is frozen forever in an unflattering guffaw that distorts his face, but still looks ultimately disingenuous due to not reaching his (disproportionate and eerily fixed) eye.
From the context of being in the Crystal Palace, a cabaret, it is likely that the woman is a stripper or prostitute, situating her at the bottom of the social ladder. By placing her in a luxurious environment, drinking champagne with a military officer, wearing nice boots and stockings, and staring at him like a temptress, Dix is setting her up as one acting out of envy: she is trying to act like she is a fine fancy woman when she is actually some kind of sex worker. For the officer’s part, he is there cavorting on a night out, giving a rose to a woman for whom he has probably paid. Dadaists were particularly anti-military; Dix himself suffered considerable mental trauma during the war, and Dadaism as a whole was characterized by a horror for the unbelievable carnage that had been wrought by military power plays having nothing to do with the people. This officer’s commitment to his cause, showing off his hobnail boots, wearing his hat indoors, and drinking German wine (the red, white, and black ribbon identifies the bottle as from the imperial era) could perhaps be seen as honorable, but Dix paints him so drunk and lecherous that he is clearly a critique of the military trying to emulate the officialness of a moral authority they envy but will never have.
Memories of a Glass House in Brussels is especially characteristic of Dix’s work because of its self-conscious, almost parodical use of Cubism; by setting the scene in the Crystal Palace, a mirror-lined cabaret in Brussels, Dix introduces the geometric repetition of Cubism, but by giving it a logical explanation and largely staying true to how reflections from different angles would look, he pokes fun at Cubism’s usual lack of this rationality. The inclusion of mirrors also adds to the theme of the characters’ empty self-importance; as the naked prostitute pretends to be an elegant lady and the drunken soldier pretends to be a mighty conqueror, their reflections surround them in their fantasy world and distract them from the ugly truth of their reality, which instead Dix lays bare for the viewers of the work.
