Turkish Cafe (II) 1914

August Macke made this painting, Turkish Cafe (II), with oil on canvas, and it's like stepping into a dream. It's not a photograph, right? It's a feeling of being somewhere, like a memory. The first thing that grabs me is how the colors vibrate against each other. That saturated blue, those pinks and yellows, everything's got a kind of electric charge. I imagine Macke, slathering on the paint, trying to capture not just what he saw but what it felt like to be there. The way he uses these vertical strokes, it's almost architectural. It’s as if the painting is built up, layer by layer, like a memory palace, and it's a space between abstraction and representation. I find myself wondering if he knew he was part of a conversation with other artists like Matisse or the German Expressionists, all pushing the boundaries of color and form. Painting is such a cool embodied expression, don't you think? Like a conversation across time, where we're all just riffing off each other, trying to make sense of the world in our own way.