Hoofd van Christus met aureool 1924

Editor: We’re looking at Lodewijk Schelfhout's "Head of Christ with Halo," a woodcut print from 1924 housed here at the Rijksmuseum. The monochrome and linear rendering really strikes me. It's so austere, almost unsettling. How do you interpret this work through the lens of its visual elements? Curator: Indeed. Consider the stark contrast—the sharp black lines carving out form from the pale void. The compressed planes of the face are striking. Notice how the aureole isn’t softly luminous but aggressively radiating, constructed of hard, unmodulated lines. Does this aesthetic choice resonate with any formal qualities typical of Expressionist printmaking? Editor: I see what you mean! The geometric planes composing his face feel almost… Cubist? And the harsh, raw lines defining the halo are definitely Expressionistic. It almost looks like broken glass radiating from his head. Curator: Precisely. Note the almost brutal simplification of the facial features. The eyes, mere slits; the mouth, a compressed line. These aren’t details meant to humanize, but rather to deconstruct. Could we interpret this abstraction not as reverence, but as an exploration of form, an exercise in reducing an iconic image to its graphic essence? The texture, achieved through the woodcut medium, emphasizes this stark quality. Editor: So, instead of the usual sympathetic or divine portrayal of Christ, Schelfhout prioritizes line, form and material, making us confront the very construction of the image itself. I’d never considered approaching a religious subject so analytically! Curator: It invites us to contemplate the intersection of the spiritual and the formal—challenging the assumed narrative through the materiality of the work. It encourages a reconsideration of how meaning is produced.