Jester c. 1938

This is Elmer Weise's ‘Jester’, looks like it was made with colored pencil on paper. The way he builds up the form with careful lines feels like watching something emerge, bit by bit, and that's so much of what artmaking is about - a process of discovery. The thing that gets me is how Weise uses color. The green is unexpected, like a bruise, for a jester costume. And those pale pink cuffs? It’s not quite clownish, more melancholic. There’s a tension between the flatness of the paper and the implied depth, the way the jester’s form seems to both exist and not exist in the same space. Those marionette strings are so literal, yet they suggest something more abstract. I'm reminded of Red Grooms, another artist who’s not afraid to mix humor with something darker. Both play with the idea of performance and reality, making you wonder what's behind the mask. Weise leaves so much unsaid. It’s this ambiguity, this space for our own projections, that makes the work so alive.