Kopf Jakob Bosshart 1921

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner made this woodcut portrait of Jakob Bosshart at an unknown date. The black and yellow, it’s pretty striking. The texture comes from the woodblock, and you can see every cut, like the face is emerging from the grain. Look at the eyes behind those glasses: Kirchner really gets to the way seeing affects being seen. I love the immediacy of woodcut, and I'm thinking about Munch. The urgency in the marks, it makes you wonder about the process and how fast he had to work to get the image from his head down onto the block, then onto the paper. You get a sense of Bosshart too, his personality, through Kirchner’s mark-making. Art is always a conversation, isn't it?