Self-portrait 1925

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner made this self-portrait with pencil, at an unknown date. I just love how immediate and fragile it feels, like a memory barely captured on the page. There's a haunting vulnerability here. Kirchner's self-portrait feels like a search, a searching for self, not showing off at all. The lines are tentative, searching, and mapping his face, as if trying to understand himself. It’s like he’s asking: ‘Who am I?’ And he is thinking it through drawing. I think of other expressionist portraitists, like Beckmann, and his self-portraits, also very psychological. All artists are in an ongoing conversation and exchange of ideas across time, inspiring one another’s creativity. Ultimately, painting—or drawing—is a form of embodied expression. There are no fixed meanings. The questions are more important than the answers.