13494 („Es ist die Eintracht hochgepriesen …“) 1931

John Elsas made this drawing, 13494 ("Es ist die Eintracht hochgepriesen ..."), with ink on paper sometime around 1931. Look at that simple, yet assertive, use of black ink! It’s a raw, immediate kind of mark-making, very process-oriented, like he just went for it. The starkness of the black against the paper makes the figures pop. You can almost feel the texture of the paper through the thin strokes of the ink. The grass is made of a series of upward flicks. The two little figures in the image seem to have smudged and blurred bodies, their forms built up with short, repetitive marks, like nervous energy made visible. It's like he’s trying to capture something fleeting, something ephemeral, in the act of drawing itself. This piece reminds me of some of the drawings of children you see from the early 20th Century, like Karl Brendel's illustrations, which are simple, honest and unconcerned with artifice. With art you see a conversation happening over time, a kind of call and response. Art is never really finished, is it?