Garden on Lake Thun 1913

August Macke gave us "Garden on Lake Thun," a painting made with oil on canvas that sings with blues, greens, yellows, and reds. I can imagine Macke out there, squinting at the scene, thinking how to get the light just right. There's this push and pull between abstraction and representation. Like, he's trying to show us a garden, sure, but he's also breaking it down into these cool, geometric shapes. Look at the trees—they're like these chunky blocks of color stacked on top of each other. And the mountains in the background? Almost cartoonish in their simplicity. Then there's the surface of the painting itself, that tactile presence and the physicality of the medium. You can almost feel the brushstrokes, the way the paint is thick in some places and thin in others. I’m kind of jealous! Macke's clearly been looking at the French guys, like Cézanne, but he's doing his own thing, too. That's how it goes, right? We're all just riffing off each other, trying to find our own voice in the conversation.