Wozu ängstigen 1943

Karl Wiener made this painting with oil on canvas. The brushstrokes are soft, almost washy, like he’s trying to capture a dream or a memory. I wonder what Wiener was thinking, painting this kind of scene. Look at the colours, all these blues and greens, and then bam! a skull grinning out at you. It's like he's saying, "Hey, even in the most peaceful, natural settings, death is still there, lurking." But the skull isn’t scary, it's almost funny, like a cartoon. Maybe Wiener was thinking about mortality, about how everything ends, but also about how that's just part of life, part of the beauty of it all. I love how the trees seem to go on forever, fading into the background. The whole thing feels a bit like a stage set, with the skull as the main actor. It reminds me of Ensor's paintings, with their carnival-like atmosphere. Artists, you know, they’re all in conversation with each other, across time, across styles, riffing on the same themes, trying to make sense of it all.