Group portrait with Schönberg 1908

Richard Gerstl made this group portrait with globs of paint, almost like he was sculpting it into existence. There's a kind of frenetic energy here, a wildness in the strokes that suggests a world constantly in motion, always on the verge of dissolving. I imagine him attacking the canvas, wrestling with these figures, trying to capture something elusive. Maybe it was their essence, maybe it was the feeling of being together. I think of thick daubs of color—yellows and reds, blues and browns—smeared and blended with this fierce intensity. I think of other painters like Soutine or even Van Gogh, wrestling with paint, too. Gerstl's communicating something raw, something visceral. It’s an act of pushing against representation, to try to get at something else. You can see it in the way the faces melt into the background, how the light seems to devour the forms. Artists, we're all in this conversation, struggling with the same questions, pushing each other forward.