At the Conference II c. 1919

Jean-Louis Forain made this drawing called 'At the Conference II' sometime in his career, and it seems to be rendered with ink on paper. Look at the way Forain uses line, so economical and yet so descriptive. It's all about suggestion, right? The paper is left bare in many places, and yet we get a real sense of the space and the characters within it. It reminds me of making a painting where the underpainting is just as important as the finished surface, where the ghost of the first marks always remains visible. There's a real tension in this drawing between the immediacy of the mark and the formality of the scene, as if Forain is showing us something off-guard. You could put him in dialogue with someone like Daumier, who also captured the absurdity of modern life with a satirical edge, but with an even more frenetic energy. Ultimately, it's a reminder that art is always a conversation, an ongoing exchange of ideas across time.