Portrait of a Girl 1909

Editor: So, this is Alexej von Jawlensky's "Portrait of a Girl" from 1909. Oil on… well, either canvas or paper? It's hard to tell from here. I’m really struck by the almost otherworldly quality. Those blues and greens…it’s like she's emerged from a dream. What leaps out at you? Curator: A dream, yes! Or maybe a memory, just out of reach. The way he slathers that paint, almost raw, really hits you, doesn't it? I see a yearning, a searching in that young girl's eyes – amplified, of course, by the German Expressionist movement Jawlensky swam in. Makes you wonder what he saw in her, doesn't it? A lost innocence, maybe? Or a premonition of things to come. He's less concerned with replicating her appearance and more concerned with revealing something truer. Do you feel that? Editor: Definitely. The colors are so…unnaturalistic, almost jarring. The green skin especially throws me. Is he trying to make us uncomfortable? Curator: Perhaps. Uncomfortable, or perhaps more…awake? He wants us to see beyond the surface. He's not just painting a girl; he's painting a feeling, an atmosphere, an interior landscape. Look at that single braid. How simple it is, but also, maybe, representative of girlhood? Do you find it striking that he used such bold colours, especially since portraits are supposed to, like, capture a likeness, a real sense of an actual person. And yet… Editor: It does. It's a world away from those stiff society portraits, that’s for sure. He wasn't aiming for flattery, was he? I feel as though I can 'sense' what's within...that’s really interesting. Curator: Flattery? Never! Jawlensky wanted something more profound. This painting whispers secrets, don’t you think? Thanks for pointing out how ‘modern’ this artist feels, over a hundred years after this painting was done.