Kenner 1923

Erich Wichmann made this drawing 'Kenner' sometime in 1923. It's all done with graphite pencil on paper; the surface looks toothy and absorbent. The drawing is of a vaguely face-like form, but really it's a build-up of loose marks, like he was kind of feeling his way around, trying to fix something that's unfixed and maybe unfixable. The artist's marks are really present—the smudges and the erasures. I imagine him circling and searching, pressing down and lifting up, the whole process visible on the page. I wonder what he was thinking, and how this drawing relates to the quote he inscribed at the bottom: "The reverse is 'anxiety', sickle." Maybe Erich was feeling anxious and this drawing was his attempt to get a handle on it. I feel that, I really do. We're all just trying to make sense of our feelings, and sometimes all we have is a pencil and a piece of paper. It's all connected somehow, across time.