Otto Dix developed a clear, analytical visual language in the early 1920s, marking a new artistic beginning after the war, using his unflinching approach to document the reality of the present time.
With his scandalous watercolor “Salon d'amur (Sailors' Bar),” he succeeded in creating an uncompromising distillation of the provocative, erotically charged atmosphere of the time. Inspired by a memorable stay in Hamburg in 1921, during which he explored the harbor and the red-light district along the Reeperbahn, Dix discovered the motif of the heroic sailor: a figure in a “state of exception” who embodies both sexual virility and social freedom. The sailor is regarded as “a floating, unreal figure who springs from the dreams of land dwellers. He is an escapist fantasy” (quoted from: Timo Heimerdinger, Der Seemann. Ein Berufsstand und seine kulturelle Inszenierung 1844–2003, Cologne 2005, pp. 77 and 198).




Dix presents the concept of freedom and sexual vigor with blunt directness in the “Salon d'amur (Sailors' Bar)” offered here. The crowded sailors' bar is a scene of excessive drinking, desire, and depravity. Sailors, prostitutes, and voyeurs crowd into the stuffy confines of the bar, its red light atmosphere permeated by thick tobacco smoke and perfume. The boundaries between stage and reality become blurred: while an obscene scene in the background goes almost unnoticed, people in the foreground drink, flirt, and smoke. The American flag flies above the scene, symbolizing modern promises, but also alienation and excess. There is a cop at the edge of the picture, an ambivalent figure who promises control but also seems to be part of the action. This dense scene shows Dix's keen sense of social contradictions. The state order appears fragile, its representatives wavering between power and powerlessness. It is therefore not without irony that Dix himself was charged with “indecency” a year later. Among the works that were the subject of the charges was another brothel scene: “Salon II” (1921).




The subject of the sailors' bar occupies a central position in Otto Dix's oeuvre. “Salon d'amur (Sailors' Bar)” can be classified as one of a series of related, high-quality watercolors in which Dix explores the milieu of sailors' brothels (cf. Pfäffle A 1922/75, A 1922/94, A 1922/128). Here, the sailor appears as a symbol of untamed, virile masculinity: excessive, physical, detached from bourgeois morality. As art historian Änne Söll points out, these depictions are a response to the “crisis of masculinity” in the aftermath of World War I. They show the fantasy of an anti-bourgeois existence, free from obligations and entirely devoted to sexual desire.
Dix does not make any moral judgments. His depictions remain sober and serious—an expression of his claim to portray reality unvarnished, even where it eludes public view. As early as 1919, he wrote to his friend Conrad Felixmüller: “I desire to get very close to our present, to be overwhelmingly contemporary, without submitting myself to any artistic dogma.” (Otto Dix, 1919, quoted from: Otto Dix – Der böse Blick, Düsseldorf 2017, p. 217). [KA]