To kvinder slås om en mand 1908

Oluf Hartmann made this small etching, “Two Women Fighting over a Man,” sometime around the turn of the century. The composition is a flurry of marks, a tangle of limbs. You can feel the artist working the plate, scraping and biting to get these furious lines. Look at the area where the figures meet the ground; the etched marks mimic the struggle above, a kind of frenzied scribbling. In contrast, the bodies themselves are more or less blank, rendered in negative space. The eye jumps around, trying to resolve the image, but the longer you look, the more the forms begin to dissolve. What is figure, what is ground? This kind of ambiguity reminds me of Goya, who used aquatint to such great effect. Both artists use a similar tonal range to create a dreamlike space, full of violence and desire. It’s a raw and visceral piece that leaves you with more questions than answers.