Self-portrait 1938

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner made this self-portrait with pencil on paper. You know, staring at yourself is one of the hardest things to do, so I can only imagine the concentration it must have taken to create this image, to capture his likeness. Look at how the shadow falls across one side of the face, constructed with short, purposeful pencil marks. He's given himself these intense, staring eyes. It is amazing what you can do with line. He's used it to shape the face, and to suggest the dark space beyond. In this piece, he seems to me to be both trying to see himself, and at the same time, to perform himself, to explore painting as a method for probing at an unstable, unfixed, always emerging sense of self. That's what painters do, and why we keep doing it.