Caliban from the portfolio Visions of Shakespeare (Shakespeare Visionen) 1918

Alfred Kubin made this drawing of Caliban as part of a portfolio of Shakespearean characters, using delicate pen lines that feel both precise and frantic. It’s a process of seeing, feeling, and then letting the pen run wild. Kubin’s marks build up to create this creature of the earth. The hatching gives him form, texture, and a kind of internal life. His right knee, look at that scrabbling set of marks, how they describe weight, direction and a kind of animal energy. You can imagine Kubin’s hand moving quickly, trying to capture a vision before it disappears. Kubin reminds me of Goya, another master of the grotesque and the imaginative. Both artists understood that art is a space for exploring the darker sides of human nature, where ambiguity reigns and monsters lurk.