Portrait eines Mannes 

Karl Wiener crafted this portrait of a man in 1948, capturing an image imbued with the somber tones of its time. Note the man's features - his mustache and goatee, framing a face marked by deep shadows. The shadows here, you see, have a lineage. Consider the tradition of the 'memento mori' in art, where shadows and stern countenances remind us of life's transience. Now, observe how such shadowed visages appear across epochs – from ancient Roman portrait busts to the works of the German Expressionists. The Expressionists used stark contrasts to convey intense emotional states, a technique not dissimilar to Wiener’s. These are not mere aesthetic choices, but visual echoes resonating with collective anxieties and existential reflections. The weight of history and the inevitability of mortality haunt the man's eyes, connecting him to a lineage of figures grappling with the human condition. It is this non-linear, cyclical progression of symbols that fascinates me.