Vajda Lajos Önarckép 1936. Ceruza. Kollzs, Papír. 320x255 1936

Vajda Lajos made this self-portrait out of pencil, collage and paper in 1936. It’s like he’s x-raying his own head, searching inside. I can almost feel him there, hunched over this drawing, layering image upon image, trying to capture something that words just can’t reach. There's a skull hovering near the top of his head, a symbol of death, of course. But it also makes me think of the Surrealists and the way they were trying to get to the unconscious, the world of dreams and desires. It's like he's saying, "I'm not just skin and bones. I'm also this swirling mass of thoughts and feelings, memories and fears." And that’s what art can do, right? It can hold all those messy, contradictory things at once. Artists are constantly in conversation with one another. Each one builds on what came before, pushing the boundaries, and finding new ways to express the unexpressible. We want to find a feeling in the world, something solid and true.