Four Crosses 1924

Rudolf Bauer made this untitled oil painting, Four Crosses, and it’s a real trip into abstraction, pure process. Look at the way the colors kinda float and blend, less about depicting something, more about the doing of painting itself, ya know? The paint's applied in layers, transparent in places, thick in others. You can see the history of the brushstrokes, how they build up to create texture and depth. There's this great big central orb, like a celestial body, and these bright orange crosses orbiting it, all off-kilter. I like the way the crosses aren’t perfect, they are imperfect, a little wobbly even, like they’re dancing around this cosmic center. Bauer was part of this whole scene of artists exploring abstraction, kinda like Kandinsky, both searching for a way to paint feeling itself. It's not about answers; it’s about the ongoing conversation of art, the endless possibilities of what paint can do.