Berlin Symbols #6 1914 - 1915

Marsden Hartley made "Berlin Symbols #6" with charcoal on paper. He reduced everything down to just what he needed, line and tone, it's a real process of distillation, of seeing how little you can do to say the most. The texture of the charcoal gives the lines a kind of crumbly, fragile quality that I find really beautiful. Look at the way he's rendered the waves at the bottom. It's so simple, just a few squiggles, but it totally evokes the feeling of water. Then there are these vertical lines rising up out of the water, supporting a kind of geometric head. It's like a totem, a symbolic figure emerging from the depths. Hartley was part of this group of artists in the early 20th century that included people like Georgia O'Keeffe, who were all trying to find a new visual language to express the modern world. Like them, Hartley invites us to slow down and look closely, to find meaning in the simplest of marks. He shows us that art isn't about perfect representation, it's about feeling and expression.