Old Man with a Cane 1901

Here's a drawing called, Old Man with a Cane, made by Abraham Walkowitz in 1901. Looking at this work, I can just imagine Walkowitz sketching away, trying to capture the essence of this old man with swift, scribbly lines. There’s a real sense of movement, almost like the man is flickering in and out of focus. The little marks all around the figure, are they rain, are they birds? I feel a real kinship with Walkowitz. I bet he was thinking about how to show the weight of time, the way a body can become a landscape of wrinkles and stoops. I wonder if he saw the way the old man’s cane echoed the lines of his own posture? There’s a raw, honest quality to this drawing. It reminds me of other artists who were trying to capture a sense of modernity. Ultimately, it's about how we keep looking, keep drawing, keep trying to make sense of the world, and each other.