Steinlen de Face Tete Droite 1905

This portrait by Théophile Alexandre Steinlen seems to be rendered in charcoal or lithographic crayon, maybe some other greasy black medium. You can see the artist smudging and dragging the material across the paper; they coaxed a likeness out of the dark. I wonder what it was like for Steinlen to make this? He’s looking intently at his subject – the planes of the face, the beard catching the light – trying to get it down. There is something warm about it though. The dark background is almost a painting in itself, it's got that almost Rothko-like sublime darkness thing going on. The way he's brought light out of this dark reminds me of Goya, but also anticipates some modernists like de Kooning, who were obsessed with the tonal qualities of black and white photography. Painters are always in conversation, looking at each other, responding, interpreting. And ultimately, painting is this embodied expression, always a little ambiguous, always allowing space for new meanings.