In Flight 1920

Alfred Kubin made 'In Flight' with ink on paper. The marks here are all about speed. You can see how the pen barely touched the paper in some places, scratching out the barest suggestion of form. I love the way that Kubin uses a kind of shorthand to describe the figures, turning them into almost cartoonish symbols. It is as if the people are just part of the landscape. They are made of the same stuff as the rocks and the plants. Look at the dark hatching around the buildings and figures. The ink is almost a weather system of its own. It reminds me a little bit of James Ensor's etchings with their nervous energy and strange, dreamlike imagery. Kubin's work invites us to embrace the messy, unresolved, and contradictory aspects of being human. And maybe that's the most beautiful thing about it.