The Skat Players (1920)
The Skat Players is an artwork by German expressionist Otto Dix. In it, three horrifically mutilated veterans play a game of cards in what appears to be the backroom of a café. It is both a painting and a collage. The cards the men are holding hold are real, as are the newspapers above their heads, near “skin drafts” with which Dix attempts to reconstruct the image.
To Dix, a war veteran, The Skat Players represented the fate he had narrowly avoided. To Emile, who just barely missed the draft, they evoke something similar. Their physical scars are a reminder of the great human cost of the war.
But the portrayal of the war-disabled body in the visuals arts of the Weimar Republic is a complex one. Despite their suffering, the men seem to cling to their military honors, proudly displaying medals on their chest and wasting their time outwitting each other in frivolous card games. The soldiers are not mere victims of the militaristic and capitalist system but also its enablers, “close to the militarists, industrialists, and the agents of the bourgeoisie, who were responsible for the war and the social disorder.”
In The Skat Players, Emile sees a representation of his own contradictory feelings towards his older brother Michel, who died in the war. On one hand, he mourns his destruction and rages against the injustice of his suffering. On the other, he sees him as the pliant and disposable instrument of a brutal system.
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