Der Friseur 1912

This is "Der Friseur", by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, made probably around 1912, but honestly, dating prints can be a real headache. The whole thing looks scrubbed back, reworked, full of ghostly figures, a real mess! But I mean that in a good way. Look at the way the barber's hands are drawn, so sharp and angular, and then the way the face of the person getting the haircut is almost smudged away. There's a real tension between clarity and chaos here, something that always gets me going. The texture is really something. I can imagine Kirchner working the plate, wiping it back, adding more lines, creating this dense, layered surface. It's like he's not just depicting a scene, he's also showing us the process of how the image came to be. It reminds me a bit of Edvard Munch, that same feeling of anxiety and unease. But also, this idea of art as a conversation, where artists borrow and steal and transform each other's ideas. It's all one big, beautiful, messy conversation.