Wüster Traum c. 1928

Karl Wiener made "Wüster Traum" with what looks like oil pastels, and you can really feel the artist’s hand in the work. The colours are layered and smudged, giving everything a hazy, dreamlike quality. The surface is built up with these crayon strokes, like he’s almost sculpting with colour. There’s a tension between the different marks - see that sunburst in the background? It's like an explosion of energy, but then it's all contained within the dense network of dark lines. And the way he renders the figures, especially the nude, is so raw and immediate. It feels like he’s trying to capture a feeling more than a likeness. This reminds me a little of late Guston, who also embraced a kind of messy, emotionally charged figuration. But where Guston is all cartoonish and bold, Wiener is more tentative, like he’s feeling his way through the darkness. Art's all about this dialogue between artists, riffing on each other’s ideas, isn’t it? And ultimately, it’s up to us to decide what it all means.