THE TIN DRUM, 2024
Howard Mason, The Tin Drum, 2024
Oil on canvas, 50 x 40 cm
The boy depicted in Howard Mason’s The Tin Drum (2024) is inspired by Oskar Matzerath, the central character in Günter Grass’s 1959 novel The Tin Drum.
Oskar is a child born in Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) in the years leading up to World War II. On his third birthday, he decides to stop growing, both physically and emotionally, as a form of rebellion against the hypocrisy, violence, and moral corruption of the adult world. Throughout the novel, Oskar communicates his protest and preserves his sense of self by beating his tin drum — a symbol of innocence, memory, and defiance — and by using his piercing scream, which can shatter glass.
In Mason’s painting, the boy standing with his drum embodies that same figure — a child confronting the rise of fascism, bearing witness to history with a mixture of vulnerability and defiance. The crowd of sombre adults and Nazi banners behind him recall the setting of Grass’s story, where Oskar’s drumming becomes both a personal act of survival and a universal symbol of protest against collective guilt and moral blindness.
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Rebecca Meanly
Abstract Paintings