The artist borrows 1953 footage of the nuclear destruction of a house on a Nevada Test Site to create a spooky elegy for a suburban domicile sacrificed to the bomb. Secular Light, a collapsing image in the process of conversion from matter to energy, is a documentary reflecting the fragility of our social contract, our mortality and a possible pyrocatharsis. Robert Beckmann is the recipient of fellowships from the Western States Arts Foundation, the Nevada State Arts Council, and the Chicago Art Institute. His works are included in many public collections including the Denver Art Museum and the Yale University Art Gallery. Beckmann resides in Henderson, Nevada, near the Nevada Test Site.
Works trace the German experience through the wars.
Underlying much of his work is a Byzantine sense of expanding visual fables with a distinctly Mediterranean influence. This flippant take on tragedy is what makes his work modern. His work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of Art and the Los Angeles Museum of Art. Cultural Escape, an etching and aquatint in seven panels measuring 32 feet overall was conceived as a scroll meant to be read from right to left. The artist combines universally understood symbols with his own private iconography.