Gethsemane 1916

This is Oskar Kokoschka's 'Gethsemane,' a print made with drypoint, and it has an almost frantic energy, wouldn't you say? Imagine Kokoschka's hand moving swiftly across the plate, digging into the metal, driven by some inner urgency. The lines are restless, searching, creating forms that seem both solid and ephemeral. The light is stark, dramatic, throwing figures into sharp relief against the dark, tangled background. I feel a kinship with Kokoschka here. I think, what was he thinking? The act of making, of wrestling with the material, becomes a way to process complex emotions, to grapple with uncertainty. Like a stream of consciousness, you know? But you don't really know where it's going. Just gotta go! You get a feeling of this shared struggle to articulate something elusive, something just beyond the grasp of language. In this way, artists are always in conversation with one another, echoing and amplifying each other’s voices across time.