Soldier Surveying Battlefield c. 1916 - 1918

Maximilien Luce made this drawing, called 'Soldier Surveying Battlefield', with ink and graphite on paper. The blue lines in the soldier's helmet and around the edge of the paper feel a bit like a child's coloring outside the lines, playful and loose. All of the marks feel tentative, as if Luce is thinking through the subject as he goes. There are washes of gray ink, but the lines are wiry and the paper shows through. The soldier's long coat has these great vertical marks, like rain coming down or tears on a page. A couple of spots of thick black ink anchor the composition. I love the little marks in the distance, squiggles and dots and dashes suggesting the chaos of war. It makes me think of other artists like Philip Guston, who also used simple, almost cartoonish marks to deal with very serious subject matter. Art can hold a lot of dark stuff, but it doesn't always have to be so serious.