653 The Boy with the Green Hair 1967

Friedensreich Hundertwasser made this print, named "653 The Boy with the Green Hair", with a kind of obsessive energy. The radiating lines, that big, bulbous head, all those squiggles, it's like he's trying to map out a whole universe, one line at a time. I wonder what Hundertwasser was thinking when he made this? Maybe about the way we contain our thoughts, feelings, memories. It's like a brain-scan, but one that is also about feeling, about being in the world. The lines are so repetitive and frenetic, it's like a whole cosmos contained within a single being. He's working with color, line, and form, but it's also about something bigger, something about life itself. It reminds me a bit of Gustav Klimt, that same kind of decorative impulse, but also a deep exploration of inner states. That slash of red is such a bold move and disrupts the whole image. For me, it is about how painting creates spaces where things can happen that you would never expect.