The End - Verdun c. 1916

Jean-Louis Forain made this etching, ‘The End – Verdun’, sometime around the First World War. Look at how he's used these scribbly, scratchy lines. It’s all about the process, isn't it? Like he's trying to get something down quickly, before it disappears. The way he's layered these lines, it’s almost like he's building up a kind of emotional texture. See how the bodies and the landscape kind of merge together? There's a real physicality to it, you can almost feel the weight of the bodies, the grit of the earth. And then you've got that tombstone sticking out, like a full stop. It's stark, no messing around. Forain reminds me a bit of Käthe Kollwitz, that same sense of empathy, that commitment to showing the harsh realities of life. Neither of them are trying to pretty things up. They're just showing it like it is, or was, and leaving us to figure out what it all means. And maybe that's the point, there is no single, easy answer.