Gelmeroda V 1916

Lyonel Feininger made this drawing, Gelmeroda V, with what looks like charcoal, in 1916. It's all greys and blacks and looks like the artist built it up bit by bit, rubbing and smudging and layering to get those darks. I can imagine Feininger out in the landscape, squinting at the church, trying to capture the light and shadow, and how the geometric shapes of the building seem to almost dissolve into the atmosphere. The charcoal marks are so physical. You can almost feel the artist's hand moving across the paper, pressing down hard in some areas and barely touching it in others. It’s like he’s not just drawing a church, but also drawing the feeling of being in that place, at that time, thinking about shapes. You know, the way he uses these angular forms reminds me a little bit of the cubists, but with something else, a kind of longing. Like he is using the church to talk about ideas, his ideas. It's like artists are always in conversation, looking at each other's work and building on it. And that ambiguity is exactly what makes painting so great - it's never just one thing, it's always open to interpretation.