Untitled 1943

This untitled artwork by Kukryniksy is all nervous lines and sickly yellow; like a nightmare you can’t shake. I see the artist making decisions, scratching away at the paper, building up the image through line and caricature. I imagine the artist thinking about the absurdity of power, sketching and smudging to get the point across. What a strange job that must be - to try and capture the essence of someone's badness with ink. I feel how the scratchy marks and grotesque figures shape our experience of the piece. It's all so physical, so present. And the way the figures are rendered – dismembered, humiliated. It reminds me of Goya's etchings, that same dark humor and unflinching gaze. It is all part of an ongoing conversation, isn’t it? A conversation about what it means to be human, to wield power, to create art. What do you see when you look at this?