Director Ludvig Didrichsen 1916

Edvard Munch made this portrait of Director Ludvig Didrichsen with ink on paper, and what strikes me first is the directness and immediacy of his mark-making. It feels like he’s thinking through the process of describing the sitter, rather than trying to make a perfect likeness. Look at the tangle of lines that describe Didrichsen’s suit. There is a real energy to the accumulation of marks, and they are raw and expressive. The lines overlap and intersect, creating a dense, almost chaotic texture that contrasts with the relative smoothness of the face. See how the face is built up of more open, sparse lines, which give it a sense of volume and light. It’s interesting to think of artists like Philip Guston who pursued a similar kind of rawness in their later work. This portrait really reminds us that art is a verb!