Berit 1905

Anders Zorn made this etching called “Berit,” using a metal plate and acid, pulling it through a press to make the print. It’s all about the gesture, right? I can almost feel the scratching and biting of the acid to make the lines, as Zorn coaxes the image out of the darkness. What must it have been like to create this image? He’s trying to work something out, and I imagine the artist, Zorn, working at it, wiping the plate, re-etching it, trying to conjure a mood from a blank surface. The plate is pretty small. I bet he felt so close to this image. You can almost see the way he dug into the plate to create these dark, inky shadows. He doesn’t let go of the image. He’s fighting for it. When I see this, I think of other etchers like Rembrandt. The way artists learn from each other, that’s painting too, right? A language of marks that speaks across time.