Kriegsgroteske mit Selbstbildnis 1944

Karl Wiener made this drawing, Kriegsgroteske mit Selbstbildnis, with pencil or charcoal on paper. It feels like a set of architectural plans gone wild! The lines are tentative, like a first draft, with lots of corrections. I love this openness, like the process is still alive, even now. Wiener’s use of hatching gives the forms weight and volume, and the gray tones give everything a melancholic, dreamlike quality. It’s both funny and horrifying. Look at the city being bombed, a giant woman with stockinged legs looming in the background, and that self-portrait in the foreground. It's a world turned upside down, but Wiener is unflinching. I’m reminded of George Grosz, another German artist who didn’t shy away from depicting the absurdity and darkness of his time. It’s that tension between realism and surrealism that makes the work so compelling; art doesn't need to give answers, but it can ask really good questions.