"Jesus sera en agonie jusqu'a la fin du monde..." 1926

This is "Jesus sera en agonie jusqu'a la fin du monde..." by George Rouault, and is a black and white image created with strong gestural marks. I imagine Rouault working on this, maybe in a flurry, scratching and smudging the surface, trying to get at some truth of human experience. It's like he's wrestling with the image, pulling it into existence. You can see the physical quality of the ink, how he's used it both thinly and with thicker marks to create the lights and darks. The image is of Jesus, and he seems to be in terrible pain, a feeling communicated through the strong strokes and the way the figure twists. What does the title mean? I feel how art is always a conversation through time, how artists grapple with big questions. The best art, like this, always leaves space for us, the viewers, to bring our own experiences to it. It’s a question, not an answer.