Untitled (Figure) c. 1944

This is an etching, Untitled (Figure), by Anne Ryan. Looking at the surface, I see all these wiry, engraved lines that together build this… ghostly figure. You can almost feel Ryan coaxing the image out of the plate with a dry needle, unsure of what would appear. I imagine her thinking about Picasso and those line drawings of his. In a way, Ryan's created a flattened sculpture here. The face, just a few lines, becomes this mask-like thing, hovering above the rest of the figure. What's so beautiful is how economical these marks are! That looping line could be a sleeve, an arm, or just a shadow, but somehow it all holds together. It feels fragile, like a memory of a body rather than a body itself. Ryan was doing something so interesting here, exploring what a line can do, which, of course, is something painters have always done and will continue to do.