Max Klinger 1902

This is Emil Orlik’s portrait of Max Klinger. I can see him using a light tan ink, etching the image into the plate and then pressing it onto the page. Just imagine Orlik in his studio, head bent over the plate, carefully drawing Klinger’s profile, the beard, the round glasses, and solid brow. What a task, trying to capture someone else’s likeness, their inner life, in a series of lines. Does the weight of the etched line capture the weight of the brow? Does the lightness of the page evoke the lightness of being? Painters and printmakers are always in conversation with each other, wrestling with the same problems. I often think about how we build on what came before. You see the same issues coming up again and again: how to translate a feeling into form, how to suggest depth on a flat surface, how to honor the realness of the world while also inventing something new. It’s a constant push and pull, an ongoing exchange that keeps us all going.