Horae 1945

James Goetz made this print, Horae, in 1945. It's a world of cross-hatching and flowing lines depicting an allegorical scene. I can imagine Goetz hunched over the plate, carefully etching these lines with a fine tool, building up the image layer by layer. The figures are strange and distorted, somewhere between human and something else. Those faces feel tense, like two sides of a coin, both distinct and bound together. Is it a self-portrait? I'm drawn to the cross-hatching, which feels dense and claustrophobic. It’s reminiscent of Picasso’s cubist portraits, where the figure is broken down into geometric forms and reassembled on the canvas. It reminds me that artists are always having conversations with each other, across time and space. Ultimately, this image feels like a mystery, an invitation to look closely and find my own way. The ambiguity of the lines and forms allows for multiple readings, none of which are definitive. And that’s the beauty of art, isn’t it?