'A dark and violent scene': The 1927 painting that foretold Germany's downfall

A new exhibition focuses on the paintings of German painter Max Beckmann. Among them is Variety Show, an unsettling artwork depicting a chaotic cabaret scene – what does it mean, and did it foreshadow the rise of Nazism? In the 1927 painting Variety Show by German painter Max Beckmann, a cabaret performance is turned on its head. A man in a red military overcoat lies on the floor. Another walks a slack tightrope over his supine body and nearby a figure stands with their face covered in a blue cloth, while a seemingly uninterested man on a stool faces away from the spectacle. A large dog-like creature watches in the background. "It seems to be a stage, figures performing, but there's this idea of nobody really taking responsibility for what's going on here," art historian Lucy Wasensteiner tells the BBC. At first glance, it's a depiction of the nightlife prevalent in 1920s Germany. Entertainment during the Weimar period (1918–1933) exploded, with cabaret in particular becoming increasingly boundary-pushing, political and satirical. But if you look longer, the mood in the artwork is less celebratory and more peculiar. What does this strange painting tell us about this precarious mome