Dancing 1922

Wilhelm Oesterle made this print, called Dancing, sometime around 1922. Look at the way he’s used line – it’s all movement and energy, isn't it? You can feel the artist figuring things out as he goes, almost like he's dancing himself. There’s something raw and immediate about the marks. The lines are wiry, and they scratch and crawl across the surface, creating this sense of restless energy. Focus on the dancer’s hair. It's a chaotic scribble, but somehow it captures the wild abandon of movement. It makes me think about how Agnes Martin used line to create calm and quiet, Oesterle does the opposite; he makes line sing. The ambiguity is the point, you know? It’s not about perfection; it’s about the messy, beautiful process of trying to capture something fleeting.