Untitled 1950

This untitled work is by Ernst Fuchs, and it looks like it's made with ink on paper. It looks like the artist built up the image slowly, allowing the forms to emerge through obsessive mark-making. I imagine Fuchs sitting with the image over a long period of time, perhaps coming back to it day after day, building the image up, bit by bit. I wonder what he was thinking? Maybe Fuchs was concerned with questions of mortality, or even immortality. There’s a real push-pull between the figures, objects, and surfaces depicted. The contrast between the dense ink and the pale paper gives the picture a haunted feeling. There are so many details packed into the space! Notice the combination of textures, from skin and hair to geometric, almost scientific diagrams. I find myself focusing on all the strange diagrams and what they might mean. Fuchs' way of making feels linked to the work of earlier symbolists like Odilon Redon, as if all of these artists are taking part in a long conversation that stretches across time. They all show how painting can be a language, even when its meanings remain ambiguous and open to interpretation.