Untitled 1943

Here, from around the mid-20th century, Kukryniksy gives us an untitled image likely made with ink and possibly some watercolor. The frantic line work just makes you want to touch the page. The artist has used lots of frantic, scratchy marks. If you look at the horse's mane, it is made up of these wiry, nervous lines, all bunched together. This way of mark making gives the whole scene a sense of barely controlled chaos, doesn't it? The horse, caught mid-buck, looks like it’s been drawn with a shaky hand. This piece reminds me of Philip Guston, but without all the pink! There's that same sense of underlying anxiety and cartoonish unease. This is a space that asks us to question authority, and not take ourselves too seriously. It's a space for open-ended and sometimes uncomfortable conversations about who we are and what we believe.