Fanny Wocke 1916

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner made this print, ‘Fanny Wocke’, cutting into a block to make this stark image of a woman and some plant life. Imagine him, carefully dragging his tool across the surface, peeling away the wood to reveal the image. I like how the shapes work together. The hat kind of echoes the face, which echoes the plant life, and that weird abstracted eye—it’s as if everything is looking at each other! You know, art-making is a conversation, one mark answering another, the artist responding to the emerging image. Kirchner probably knew the German Expressionist woodcut artists like Emil Nolde. When I look at this print, I wonder about the relationship between the artist and Fanny. Was she a friend, a lover, a muse? Maybe Kirchner was trying to capture something essential about her, her spirit, by rendering her in these bold lines. It reminds me that we, as artists, are always in dialogue, sharing ideas and pushing each other to see the world in new ways.