Knelende kvinneakt 1921

Edvard Munch made this watercolor with loose washes in shades of peach, blue, and green. It looks like the kind of watercolor that gets splattered around, maybe in a fit of passion! There's this blobby head, and an arm kinda disappearing into the surface. The whole thing is so unresolved, like a feeling that is not quite there, the way things come into view and then blur again when you're trying to remember a dream. You can tell he was really working it, letting the colors do their thing, pushing them around. I bet Munch was thinking about bodies in space, how they take up room, how they fade into the background. He's not trying to be perfect, just trying to feel it out. It makes me think about other artists who went there, like late Turner or someone like that. Ultimately, painting is a conversation. And it's an intimate one, a little bit messy, where you're trying to get at something that's just out of reach.