Curator, Starr Figura: This is Otto Dix's Nocturnal Apparition lithograph from 1923. It's a terrifying death mask portrait of a streetwalker or prostitute. In the 1920s, Dix made many, many images of prostitutes. Prostitution proliferated in the post war years because widowhood and poverty left a lot of women with no other recourse. Dix used the image of the prostitute as a symbol of the state of decadence, destitution, and depravity that had gripped German society during these years.
This particular image looks almost like an x-ray version of Dix's color lithograph, Leonie, which is right next to it. It's this frightening spectral apparition. And [the] fearful nature of the image may be related to fears that a lot of people had at the time about diseases such as syphilis, that were specifically associated with prostitution. But on a more general level, it's an emblem of the ravaged state of German society at the time.
Director, Glenn Lowry: If you look very closely on the left-hand side of the lithograph, you'll see a profile of the artist himself, wearing a hat and gazing outward from the frame just behind the apparition.