Kurt Weill and Bertholt Brecht's Berlin

Gluttony/"Metropolis"

In “Metropolis,” Otto Dix uses a triptych to exemplify the social inequality of post-World War I Weimar Berlin. With prostitutes and mangled veterans painted in the dimly lit alleyways of the outside panels, the figures are physically separated from the swanky Weimar nightclub vibrantly depicted in the center. The dull colors of the veterans and the prostitutes make it easy for the view to ignore the flanking panels. This contrast emphasizes the indulgent excess of the rich, as Dix indicates that the rich obtain this excess at the expense of  disadvantaged groups. The figures in the center panel have fuller figures, particularly the woman sitting in the yellow dress, and the frame bursts with images of dancers, costumes, instruments, and musicians.

Dix’s painting highlights the lack of limits and excess that also characterized the Weimar republic. While inflation dramatically limited the poor and lower middle class, the rich remained privileged to have nights like these, separating themselves from the poor and disadvantaged. The center frame is so packed, and physically separate from the flanking panels, that the characters physically cannot see beyond themselves. Thus, the disparity becomes self-perpetuating.

The sense of fullness, through the use of color, composition, and the appearances of the figures themselves, shows how central gluttony was to Dix’s social critique.
 

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