A Glance Down an Alley 

August Macke created "A Glance Down an Alley" using watercolor, a medium that lends itself to capturing fleeting moments. Macke, who was part of the German Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter, traveled to Tunisia in 1914 with Paul Klee and Louis Moilliet. There's a palpable sense of the artist as an outsider looking in. The painting invites us to consider the cultural dynamics at play. We are positioned to look down the alley, as a figure with a red headscarf stands on the left, pulling our eye through the painting. Macke, who sought to represent the world as he felt it, rather than as he saw it, uses bold colors to animate the scene. There is a tension created between the everyday and the exotic. We are left to ponder what the artist, a European man, saw and perhaps also what he missed in this brief, colorful glance.