Abraham de Geweldige 1914 - 1918

Albert Hahn made this caricature of Abraham Kuyper, or ‘Abraham the Great’, in black ink, and probably sometime around the turn of the century. It’s a portrait made with a nervous kind of energy; scratchy marks fill the surface, building up the dark areas of the face and hair. The drawing feels like a transcription of a transcription; it’s a caricature after all, a quick sketch that’s already full of exaggeration. But look at the way Hahn has built the form with this mass of little lines. It’s like he’s feeling his way around the contours of the face, each stroke adding to the overall impression of weight and volume. It reminds me of the way Philip Guston built up his forms with a web of marks, finding the image through the process of drawing itself. Except Hahn's got more of a political axe to grind, which makes the marks even more charged, right?