Figure 1919 - 1920

This is Max Weber’s woodcut, "Figure". The cuts are stark, so graphic. I’m imagining Weber in his studio, pressing the wood, inking the surface, then pulling the print. It’s very physical, all that pushing and transferring. He's using a reddish brown ink, it's like dried blood. Look how he’s carving into the block, building up this blocky figure. The forms are stacked, one on top of the other, like a totem pole. The more I look, the more I feel like Weber is wrestling with representation. What does it mean to depict a figure? How much can you abstract before it disappears? See that eye hovering there like a pendant? Is that a nose? Weber is playing with the idea of a face, a body, but he’s not giving us the whole picture. He’s inviting us to participate, to complete the image in our own minds. Like a jazz riff. Painters are always talking to each other, across time, across place. Weber was looking at Cubism, at African art, trying to figure out what it all meant for his own work. It's all part of the same conversation, the same search for new ways of seeing, new ways of being.