Portret van een onbekende zwarte man

Isaac Israels made this portrait of an unknown black man with graphite on paper; the artist is thinking through the medium. Look at the face: see how the marks build up the planes of the face through scribbled lines. It’s more of an accumulation of marks than an outline. The materiality of the pencil is evident in every stroke. The side of the figure’s face is created with a heavier use of shading, those marks really create depth. Look at the directional marks that construct the shape of the jacket – they don’t try to mimic the contours of the body so much as build them through a sense of light and dark. This artist reminds me of Manet, both had this approach that artmaking is a constant conversation. There is an embrace of ambiguity, an exchange of ideas.