Gehurkte naakte vrouw 1892 - 1916

Rik Wouters made this drawing of a crouching nude woman in ink, sometime between 1900 and 1916. I can really feel the artist here, can’t you? The way Wouters coaxes the figure out of the ground with these bold, blunt marks is quite something. The ink has pooled in places creating dark, almost black, anchors to the composition. I bet he worked fast, deciding what to include, what to leave out. The marks are blunt and economical, the lines thick. There's a real dance between the line and the space it creates; they work together in a kind of call and response. The composition almost tumbles into the lower right corner. The artist is figuring out how to put something down, which makes the making visible, like a question hanging in the air. That’s what so many artists do, from Wouters to now: we keep the conversation going, speaking to each other across time.