Dancer and Audience 1917

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner made this energetic drawing, Dancer and Audience, with ink and watercolour. Look at how immediate those marks are! There's something wonderfully provisional in the way he's captured the scene. You can sense him thinking through the process of image making. The watercolour is applied in a very thin wash; this allows the pencil lines to pop. See the vertical marks of ochre, almost pillars or curtains, positioned behind the dancer which act as a backdrop. This simple colour is cleverly juxtaposed with the turquoise headdress and dress of the dancer, creating an optical vibration. The turquoise is used again to pick out the audience member in the bottom right corner, tying the composition together. The speed of execution reminds me of Toulouse Lautrec, who captured the Parisian demimonde with similar flair. Like Lautrec, Kirchner embraced the world around him, translating its energy into these vibrant images. What do you think?