Sleeping Negress c. 1943

Jack Van Deckter created this linocut, "Sleeping Negress," sometime in the 20th century. It's all black lines on white paper. The artist has carved away at the block to leave just the lines, which become the entire image. Like a dense network of tiny roads, they describe the body, and it's just a beautiful body, folded in on itself. This is what a body does when it sleeps, right? It sort of collapses. I think about what the artist was feeling. Was he just admiring this person, or did he want to show something else? He's playing with light and shadow, and the way the body makes its own shapes. You can feel the weight of it, and the rest. It reminds me of other artists who were looking at bodies in a similar way, like Käthe Kollwitz, and others, all those artists asking, "How can I depict the human form, but make it say something more?"