The Drinker / Self-Portrait

One impressive example of German modernism is Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s famous self-portrait from 1914, produced at the outbreak of the First World War. It is regarded as a key work of Expressionism. Kirchner paints himself in a resigned pose, sitting at a table, a bilious green glass with yellow contents before him. This can be read as a symbol for the fatal madness that had overtaken an age deluded by nationalism at the onset of the battle for world power in 1914.