Karakterkop 1878 - 1943

Willem van Konijnenburg made this etching, Karakterkop, sometime in his life; he was born in 1868 and died in 1943. The face emerges from a sea of cross-hatched lines, a network of tiny, restless marks. The face is built up through the accumulation of small gestures, so that the features feel provisional and unfixed. The artist's hand is present in every stroke, a reminder of the labor and time involved in the printmaking process. The eyes feel like the focal point. They are wide and a little vacant, like the person is staring into space. I find myself thinking about how the image hovers between realism and something more abstract. It’s a face, but also a field of marks, and it reminds me a little of Rodin’s sketches. You know, the ones that felt like they were reaching for a form. Art is never about fixed meanings, is it?