Self-Portrait 1931

This is Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's Self-Portrait and it's got this angularity to it, a kind of edgy vibe. I can imagine him wrestling with this thing in the studio, trying to capture himself but also, like, building a picture. The colors are intense, especially the yellow of those boards or canvases, slicing across the image. It makes me think about what it's like to be a painter, always looking, always trying to pin something down. Kirchner, he was part of Die Brücke, right? Those guys were all about emotion, about feeling something real and getting it onto the canvas. There's this tension in the painting, this feeling of unease, but also a kind of raw energy. It's like he's saying, "This is me, take it or leave it." We're all just trying to figure things out as we go along, borrowing and stealing from each other, trying to make something new.