Quappi, Patience legend 1926

This is a drawing by Max Beckmann, called Quappi, Patience legend, and it’s of a woman playing cards, or maybe dominoes – you know, patience, solitaire, that kind of thing. I can feel Beckmann with his pencil, pressing hard, then soft, building up the shading on her jacket, the side of her face, and the cards themselves. He's trying to find the form, the shape, the weight of things, of her body in space. It is a world of tonal variations that bring the whole scene into existence. I get this sense of his looking, really looking, and figuring it out as he goes along, a dance between seeing and making, questioning and answering. Does that make sense? For me, drawing is like thinking out loud, a way of processing what’s in front of you, and what’s inside you, at the same time. You can see his hand moving across the paper, a record of his looking and feeling and thinking. It's all there, isn't it? The history of art is one big conversation. We all borrow, steal, and get inspired by each other, across time, across space.