City on the Mountain (Stadt auf dem Berge) 1918

Lyonel Feininger made this woodcut, *City on the Mountain*, with stark black ink on paper, and the contrast is electric. It’s all about the cut, slash and gouge of the tool building up this angular, architectural space. The whole image is built from pure process, like an archeological dig. Look at that central hill, how it rises like a fortress, and then notice the little white rectangles of the windows which are more like teeth in a grimace! The physicality of the medium here is inescapable, as we are forced to recognise each mark, and each mark is a building block of our overall perception. Feininger's woodcuts remind me of the graphic precision of someone like Emil Nolde, but there is also a playfulness here, a sense of the absurd that is pure Feininger. The multiple viewpoints and fractured planes suggest a world that is constantly shifting and re-forming, an idea of the city as a site of constant change and possibility.