L'Offensive c. 1915

Jean-Louis Forain made this drawing, "L'offensive," with what looks like charcoal or graphite. He renders a scene of two soldiers running from an explosion. You can see the scratchy quality of the marks, like he's trying to capture a fleeting moment, a snapshot of movement and chaos. I can imagine Forain hunched over the paper, really feeling the tension in the scene. Maybe he was thinking about the futility of war, the way soldiers are just pawns in a larger game. The frantic energy of the lines, the way they seem to vibrate on the page, it all speaks to that kind of anxiety. The dark, scribbled marks suggest an explosion, a burst of energy that sends these figures scrambling. It reminds me a little of Goya’s Disasters of War series, that same sense of horror and human suffering distilled into a few simple lines. Each artist captures the emotional weight of war, using mark-making as a means to convey feeling, and reminding us that art is in an ongoing conversation across time.