Hallenarchitektur (Vaulted Architecture) [p. 18] 

Curator: Today we're looking at a page from Max Beckmann's sketchbook, a drawing entitled "Hallenarchitektur (Vaulted Architecture)". It seems to be rendered primarily in pencil and ink. What's your initial take on it? Editor: Eerie, like a Piranesi etching seen through a fog. All those receding lines... it's like staring into the skeleton of a building. And incomplete, isn't it? Intentionally so, I imagine. Like a thought not fully formed. Curator: Exactly! It reveals the raw labor of creating form. Note how the repetitive marks imply the iterative process - building something through multiple attempts. He’s less concerned with a finished product than with mapping the stages of imagining architecture. Editor: Right. And the 'sketchiness' pulls you in closer, lets you imagine yourself making marks alongside Beckmann. Were there actually vaults there? Or are we witnessing the birth of them? That scribbled-out portion at the top...fascinating! Almost insect-like. Curator: An interesting reading! I’m particularly drawn to the repetition in those lines implying texture, shadow. It asks us to consider the relationship between architectural structure, graphic labor, and the page as a space of inscription. How does this intimate form change our relationship to typically monumental forms like architecture? Editor: It definitely flattens the grandiosity, doesn't it? Turns it into a deeply personal encounter, almost a dream of architecture, more intimate and unsettling than any photograph could ever be. One wonders where this architectural fragment would exist... maybe inside the architecture of the self? Curator: Precisely. The incompleteness invites us, compels us even, to contemplate labor in a larger context. Here labor serves a critical creative practice, both in the image itself, but also prompting our viewing labor and engagement to the drawing. Editor: I find it remarkable that just a few pencil strokes can evoke such a powerful sense of space and anxiety simultaneously. Thanks for shedding more light onto this skeletal masterpiece. Curator: My pleasure. It makes you wonder about the endless possibilities held within the blank pages of sketchbooks everywhere.