Der Immerwährendeschmerz (Perpetual Pain) 1920

Heinrich Hoerle made this drawing, Perpetual Pain, with ink on paper. The fine network of lines feels tentative, like the artist is trying to extract something from the paper that won’t easily come. See the figure in the bowler hat; he seems to be tiptoeing from the scene, as if hoping not to be noticed. Are these figures suffering, or trapped in some way? The lines seem to quiver with repressed feeling. I wonder about the title, Perpetual Pain, and how that might have been on Hoerle’s mind. Did the title come before or after the drawing? Maybe Hoerle was thinking about how, as artists, we are all always in conversation with one another, wrestling with the same themes across time. The perpetual pain of being human, maybe. And the perpetual joy of making things.