Max Neumann, Untitled, May, 2018. Oil on wood, 15 5/8 x 15 5/8 inches.
A few years ago, I found myself hunting in a bookstore for the last copy of Wolfgang Hilbig’s latest translation. A socialist from East Germany targeted with kompromat, an exile endowed with awards by the Federal Republic and later reunified Germany, subject of several good reviews in English but mostly unread on this continent. Hilbig’s book, titled “I” (‘Ich,’ 1993/2015), was there, and on the cover was a painting I recognized and which, encountering of a sudden, sent a shiver down my spine: a faceless portrait, a ghost and a shroud, a ghoulish guise formed from a heavy black haze. There was Max Neumann, passing through the novel like Klee’s Angelus Novus.
