Portrait of Dr. Huggler 1935

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner made this woodcut portrait of Dr. Huggler at some point in his career. It's all stark black and white, like a high-contrast photo, but the shapes are all carved out with these really graphic, almost violent cuts. It's like he's wrestling the image out of the wood. Check out how the stripes run across the face, and also appear behind the figure, and on the vase. It totally flattens the space, turning the person into a kind of mask. The mouth is especially striking, these two little black lozenges, kind of like a ventriloquist dummy. Is the good doctor speaking or being spoken through? There's something theatrical about it, it makes me think of the German Expressionist theatre going on at the time. Kirchner’s woodcuts remind me a bit of Emil Nolde’s work, with the way they both used rough cuts and bold lines to evoke really raw emotion, but Kirchner's got this extra layer of psychological complexity. Art is an ongoing conversation, isn’t it? It's never about finding the “right” answer.