Black Pillars 1919

František Drtikol made this mysterious scene with charcoal on paper. You can almost feel the charcoal dust on your fingertips, right? I can imagine Drtikol working on this piece, maybe late at night, the only light source being the one above the artwork, and him wrestling with the shadows. Those marks feel like the artist was trying to capture something elusive—like a memory fading at the edges. There are these pillars, almost like ancient monoliths, emerging from a misty background. Is it a landscape? Is it a dreamscape? It feels like the kind of place you might stumble upon in a half-forgotten fairytale. There is something very dark and very fairytale about it! And that texture, built up with layers of charcoal, gives everything a sense of depth and weight. It reminds me of the way Symbolist painters like Odilon Redon used to work, tapping into the subconscious. In the end, artists are always in conversation with each other, right? It's a way to embrace ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations and meaning over fixed or definitive readings.