Talking on the street (Lords in the street outside the house patcher) 1922

Boris Kustodiev made this drawing, Talking on the street, in 1922, using ink on paper. It's all about the line here, isn’t it? There's this nervous energy in the way he scratches at the page. The image looks like it's about to vibrate off the paper. Take a look at how the lines come together to describe the cloaks, top hats, and skirts, and then dissolve to indicate background foliage. I mean, is that a chicken pecking away in the bottom left? It’s kind of a marvel, isn’t it? It's tempting to imagine the story here: the well-to-do chatting on the street, the woman maybe overhearing something she shouldn't, and Kustodiev capturing a fleeting moment. But drawings like this, with their raw and immediate quality, are never really about a definitive meaning. Instead, they invite us into the artist’s process, into the act of seeing and recording, as if the artist is sharing what they are experiencing in the moment. Look at the drawings of Picasso. There's a similar immediacy. These drawings are like a visual conversation that you get to eavesdrop on.