Pietà 1912

Curator: Here we have Max Oppenheimer's "Pietà," created in 1912. It’s an etching, relying heavily on stark lines. Editor: The immediate feeling is one of immense suffering. The angular forms seem to amplify the pain, distorting the figures almost violently. Curator: Precisely. Oppenheimer uses the etching technique to its full potential. Look at the density of the lines in the shaded areas, contrasting with the almost skeletal lightness in other parts of the composition. Notice, especially, the radiating lines around the figures’ heads—an interesting structural element that also seems to carry some sort of halo effect. Editor: Yes, the radiating lines certainly draw the eye and enhance the sense of spiritual anguish. But this is far from the classical Pietà we know from the Renaissance. The symbol of a mother's grief is re-contextualized; is it the agony of loss, or something more? Perhaps it speaks to a broader sense of despair that was palpable in Europe leading up to the First World War. Curator: The composition eschews traditional beauty, moving towards a raw, almost brutal expression of grief. It rejects idealized forms. The hatching emphasizes the lines and planes of the bodies, not realistic shading. Editor: The figure holding the other seems genderless in a way. Is this Mary mourning Christ or something even more universally painful? The artist uses this ambiguity of figure to enhance the theme of loss, rather than focus on traditional iconographical understanding of it. Curator: We cannot definitively label this Pietà in terms of recognizable figuration. It really comes down to pure composition to define what makes the forms recognizable; planes upon planes working toward the figures. The artist clearly leans into pure abstraction and formal reduction. Editor: In some ways, Oppenheimer strips bare not just the figures but the entire narrative, leaving us with a primal scream etched onto the plate. Curator: An intense demonstration of expressive potential rooted in very stark compositional tools. Editor: Leaving a modern reinterpretation that touches raw emotion.