The Death of Truth c. late 1930s

Carl Hoeckner made this haunting image, *The Death of Truth*, by applying dense hatched marks to paper. Looking at it, I imagine him building up the tones in layers, a bit like etching, allowing the figure to emerge slowly from the darkness. You can feel the artist’s touch in the gradations of light and shadow. What was it like to be him, I wonder, to have this image in his head and then to coax it out through the labor of mark-making? The figure’s pose is ambiguous. Are they rising or falling? Are they surrendering or reaching? The sharp, white horizontal lines dissect the composition, dividing the ethereal figure from the dense, impenetrable ground. This stark contrast between light and dark, between the material and the spiritual, is classic of expressionist printmaking and is a reminder that artists are always engaging in conversations with one another, across time and space. In the end, images like this resist fixed meanings. Instead, they invite us into a space of uncertainty and reflection.