Fünf Akte Am Wasser 1911

Otto Mueller made Fünf Akte Am Wasser with distemper on canvas, and right away I notice the way he lets his materials do the work. The whole thing feels immediate and kind of provisional. There's this amazing passage down in the lower left, where a figure is hunched over, with her arm resting on her knee. The color is built up in layers, but they're translucent, like watercolors. It's so fast and loose, and the paint is so thin you can see the canvas underneath. You can tell he wasn’t interested in perfecting anything. It’s more like he’s capturing a feeling. That feeling reminds me of Paula Modersohn-Becker, who was also doing her thing in Germany at the start of the 20th century. Like her, Mueller’s more concerned with the possibilities that art can offer than a polished end result. For both of them, art is a place where you can mess around and think with your materials.