En Communisme 1906

This is a pamphlet cover, En Communisme, made by Théophile Alexandre Steinlen in 1906. It’s a lithograph, which is a printmaking technique, and the marks have that beautiful, velvety quality that you get when working with a greasy crayon on stone. The black ink is dense, but the line work retains an incredible sensitivity. Look at the lower left corner, where Steinlen has signed his name. See how those lines describing the roots and the earth, become these almost scribbled marks in the signature? They remind me of Twombly, you know, that sense of language being both present and absent. It’s the kind of mark that's both descriptive and purely expressive. The subject is a socialist colony, so maybe the tree suggests growth, community, ideas taking root. It's interesting to consider this in contrast with someone like Munch, a contemporary of Steinlen, but whose work is so radically different. Both were deeply engaged with modern life, but came to such different conclusions about how to represent it. In art, there’s always room for many different voices and visions.