Die Wachtparade 1921

Lovis Corinth made this print, 'Die Wachtparade', with lithographic crayon. The scrappy, fragmented marks are what grab me; the image feels like a collection of impressions. Look at how Corinth uses color: touches of red and blue enliven the otherwise muted tones. The surface is soft, like a memory fading around the edges. The rider in the centre seems almost translucent, as if he could disappear at any moment. It's as though Corinth is showing us how an image is made, bit by bit, mark by mark. There’s no attempt to conceal the process. This makes me think of other German Expressionist artists who worked with printmaking like Kirchner, but with Corinth there’s an added sense of fragility, of things falling apart even as they come together. Art is always a negotiation between intention and accident, and this piece embraces that tension.