Portrait of Lorinc Szabo 1923

Jozsef Rippl-Ronai made this portrait of Lorinc Szabo with pastel, and what's striking is how immediate and intimate it feels. Rippl-Ronai's use of pastel is all about process, each stroke visible, building up to a whole. Up close, you see these soft, feathery strokes of blue suggesting the jacket, kind of smudged and hazy, like looking through frosted glass. Then, around the face, there's this delicate pinkish hue that gives him such a gentle presence. And the dark slash of his hair, it's almost brutal in its simplicity, contrasting beautifully with the ethereal quality of the rest of the portrait. It's like Rippl-Ronai is saying, here's the man, vulnerable, but also full of depth. You see this approach also in the work of Vuillard, that same kind of tender observation, finding the extraordinary in the everyday. It reminds us that art is always a conversation, an ongoing exploration.