Still Life with Sculpture 1924

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner made this oil painting, "Still Life with Sculpture," with bright, clashing colors and bold outlines. You can almost feel him pushing the paint around, searching for the form. I imagine him circling the canvas, brush loaded, trying to resolve this tension between figure and flowers, between the solid and the decorative. Look at the way the pink of the nude echoes in the floral pattern behind! See how he's used these colors to connect the subject to the space. Is it decorative? Voyeuristic? Kirchner was part of Die Brücke, a group of German Expressionists. Like them, he's simplifying and distorting to get at some raw nerve. The awkwardness of the sculpture, the almost cartoonish flowers…it’s all part of a mood. Painters like Kirchner and the other Expressionists teach us that a painting doesn’t have to be beautiful to be powerful. It’s about wrestling with the medium, making something that reflects back at you. The conversation between artists just keeps going—each new work responding to what came before, pushing it further.