The title of Max Beckmann’s first triptych, Departure, refers to its main picture and thus to a journey that means “return home” and the title of the last of his nine triptychs is also dedicated to a ‘journey’, namely the adventurous trip of the Greek heroes on a ship named Argo. Beckmann began the painting on 19 April 1950, and completed it at the end of that year after arduous months of working on right up until just before he died. On 27 December Beckmann collapsed on the corner of 69^th street and Central Park West.

Was the painter’s life thus complete? It would seem to make sense to regard the triptych as a kind of legacy at the end of a life that lasted 66 years, 13 of these spent in exile. Beckmann never saw Germany again after his emigration in 1937. The picture on the right shows a self-contained circle of women. According to information provided by Quappi, this is the ‘choir’, the group in antique theatre who ‘accompany’ the happenings on stage. Beckmann himself called the picture on the left Painter and Model while he was painting it, and titled the centre picture The Artist.

The painter is on the left working with great concentration. He not only has to paint the model; she – naked and holding a sword – is at the same time a danger to him and, what is more, she has evidently a disregard of culture (shown by her sitting on the mask). Compared to the tension in the left-hand image, the centre picture shows what is at the essence of the triptych as a whole: the encounter between two young men – whatever one may call them - from the Antique and an old man who has appeared out of the sea. We find ourselves here in the realm of mythology. The old man is showing the boys their path in life, which might be connected to the saga of the Argonauts and yet does not simply fulfil itself therein. The lyra at the feet of the young man wearing the garland around his head and the magical bird on the arm of his companion explain just as little about the saga as they do about why the picture only contains two figures. The adventure alluded to here, the cosmic significance of which is hinted at by the unusual constellation in the heavens, is a great undertaking pursued by elect young men with a wise old man to help them on their way – a motif that often appears in mythology.

Even if Beckmann’s life ended very unexpectedly, the Argonauts triptych can to all intents and purposes be seen as his legacy. With this, the life of the artist, a considerable part of which was spent in exile, might be seen to have made sense in the end in that he left the problems of exile far behind him.