Self Portrait 1915

This is Jan Mankes, who made this self-portrait in what looks like a drawing or print. The hatching is pretty amazing, with the different angles and pressures of the marks suggesting a mood and an internal state. Look at the way the lines on his forehead seem to converge and almost vibrate around his eyes. It feels like he’s trying to see himself, but the gaze is also turned inward. The whole image is constructed from these delicate, almost fragile lines, which gives the piece an intimate, searching quality. It makes me think about how we construct our identities through the act of looking and representing ourselves. Mankes reminds me a little of Käthe Kollwitz, in that his work has this real emotional depth. Maybe it's because both artists were thinking about how to capture something real about the human condition.