The Last King 1902

Alfred Kubin made this haunting drawing, 'The Last King,' with ink, and it’s all about process, you can feel the making. Look at the way he builds up the tones, with layers and layers of tiny marks. The texture feels almost velvety, like a memory fading at the edges. The king himself, slumped in his chair, looks like he's dissolving into the shadows. But it’s the smoke, spiraling upwards from the torch, that really gets me. It's so delicate, so ephemeral, it feels like the king’s last breath, or maybe the end of an era. Kubin’s work reminds me a little of Odilon Redon, that same fascination with dreams, nightmares, and the hidden corners of the psyche. Both of them knew how to make the invisible visible. Art is always about embracing ambiguity, right? It’s in these strange, unsettling images that we find the most profound truths.