Otto Dix

Otto Dix was an artist that revolved his work around the Weimar Berlin lifestyle. His paintings represented the decadence of the era and he showed this by painting prostitutes and women that look androgynous and aswell as beautifully grotesque.

Liegende auf Leopardenfell (Reclining Woman on a Leopard Skin), 1927 www.museum.cornell.edu/

This painting by Dix is of the actress Vera Simailova who is described as having fashionable androgyny. She has a twist of being two opposites - seductive because of the way she is positioned and her body language, and repulsive because she has been painted to have big proportions, and a face that could resemble a man.

Three Wenches, 1926 www.soho-art.com

In this painting Dix has painted three prostitutes in three very different sizes. I think he has done this to show that the type of prostitutes in Berlin weren't typically beautiful but instead he shows the realism of the seedy life in Berlin that prostitutes came in all shapes and sizes. This painting to me is quite shocking but entirely intriguing at the same time because of the representation it has of what a part of Berlin was like.

Close up of 'Metropolis', 1928 www.wikiart.org

The Metropolis painting is a depiction of Germany's 'Golden Twenties' lifestyle contrasting with post WWI life. The close up of the prostitutes in this image shows how Otto Dix portrays what they look like and the makeup they wore. I wanted to show this because it can give me ideas of what makeup designs I can do for the Kit Kat Girls and interpretations that Dix has made from these prostitutes.

I think Otto Dix's work will be helpful towards my makeup designs for my Kit Kat Girl character because the women he paints have the features of androgyny, makeup and hair that I would imagine the Kit Kat Girls would have. They would look beautifully grotesque like the paintings Dix portrays of women. The way he paints these women are also similar to how the Kit Kat Girls look in Cabaret 1972. I wasn't sure about how to make my designs look androgynous but by looking closely at the faces Dix has painted, their eyebrow are thing and raised and heavily blushed cheeks combined make them look like drag queens.