Männerkopf 1906

Edvard Munch made this head of a man using etching, a printmaking technique involving acid. You can see the network of thin, dark lines forming the face, full of scratchy marks. I imagine Munch working on the plate, pressing the tool, and feeling the resistance, thinking about how each mark contributes to the whole. There’s an urgency here, a need to capture something essential about this guy. The lines around his eyes and mouth, they speak of experience, of life lived, and the weight of knowing things. Think of other artists like Käthe Kollwitz, also using printmaking to explore psychological states. It feels like Munch is in conversation with them, part of a community trying to grapple with what it means to be human. The beautiful thing about art is that it’s never finished, the dialogue continues, and we get to jump in and add our own thoughts.