Dansen. Nachtvogel 1922

Henri Braakensiek made this print, ‘Dansen. Nachtvogel’, in 1922 using a monochrome palette. It’s all about process, I reckon, a kind of building up through layers of marks. Look at the texture he’s created. It’s all about these short, quick lines, a kind of shorthand. The bird itself is such a fleeting thing, like a memory of movement. The way he's rendered the hill it flies over is so detailed. The detail of this grounded point of view lets our eyes linger for a moment. There's this sense of the ephemeral, like the whole thing might just dissolve into the paper. Reminds me of the kind of spirit drawings made by Hilma af Klint, like it’s something captured from another realm. There's no solid story, just a feeling, and isn’t that what art’s about anyway?