Portret van Louis Titz 1920

Armand Rassenfosse made this portrait of Louis Titz with etching in 1926. The hatching is incredible, right? It is like the artist built up this portrait slowly, adding line after line. The colour is limited. This isn't a painting about colour as much as it is about drawing and line, and maybe even more so, the *idea* of line. Notice the way the beard is described with these thin, almost delicate lines, and how they contrast with the darker, more densely packed lines around the eye. It is almost like he is carving into the plate, each stroke deliberate and considered. I love the fact that the image seems almost unfinished. It reminds me a bit of some of Lucien Freud’s etchings, in the sense that there is a similar interest in the potential of etching to describe the subject with an absolute clarity of line. But in the end, art is about the joy of looking, and it is not always about finding definitive answers.