Ring c. 1936

This drawing of a ring was made by Kurt Melzer, but we don't know when exactly or with what. It's like Melzer is trying to give us all the angles, all at once. The materiality here is interesting; the paper is soft and absorbent, and the pencil, or maybe watercolor, spreads in a way that's almost fuzzy, which is kind of the opposite of the hard, shiny object being depicted. It's like a cloud of jewelry! I'm drawn to the middle view where we're looking at the top of the ring. The colors are muted, the execution almost naive, and yet there's this real sense of the ring as an object, a thing, a desire. It reminds me a bit of the work of Paul Klee, with its whimsical lines and playful approach to form, like art is a conversation, spanning generations, always echoing, always changing.