Mystical Head, Head Of A Girl 1918

Alexej von Jawlensky made this Head of a Girl with oil paint, and I think he approached painting a bit like jazz—playing with colour and form to find a rhythm all his own. What strikes me is the surface: smooth, with colours butted right up against each other like stained glass. Look at how he's divided the face into these distinct blocks of yellow, blue, and pink. The mouth is just this tiny, bright orange dash. Each colour seems to hum, setting off little vibrations, a syncopated beat, creating both harmony and dissonance. Then, those eyes! Gold and almond-shaped, outlined with black, they stare out at us, almost like the eyes of an icon. There is something ancient, something eternal, in that gaze. It's a reminder that art, at its best, is about a search for something deeper, something that connects us to the past, to each other, and to something beyond ourselves. I am reminded of a similarly reductive approach to depicting the figure in the work of Milton Avery.