Christ au Faubourg 1935

Georges Rouault made this print, Christ au Faubourg, with ink or paint on paper, and the tonal range is really limited, almost monochromatic, maybe a dark grey and a lighter grey. It’s all about how the marks land, how they press up against each other. Look at the texture; it’s not about blending or illusion. You see the hand at work. It’s like he’s wrestling with the subject, trying to pin down something elusive. I keep coming back to those marks; they are so direct, so unpretentious. The dark outlines aren’t just lines. They are fields of black, like solid walls that give the figures their weight and presence. You might recognize a kinship with someone like Emil Nolde, who was also into bold, expressive marks. Both artists used their materials to convey a kind of raw, unfiltered emotion. It’s not about beauty in a conventional sense. It’s about truth, or at least, their version of it.