Two Women on the Shore (Frauen am Meeresufer) c. 1920s

Edvard Munch made this print, Two Women on the Shore, and I love how the color feels both natural and totally off. Look at the way the black ink of the woman on the left soaks into the paper, almost like she's a shadow or a stain. Then, right next to her, the other woman in white is like a ghost, barely there at all. It's all surface, all feeling, and yet the medium is completely present: you can see every mark, every little imperfection in the printing process. The long bird-like shape, casting its shadow across the shore, is so strange. It's a shape that both fits and doesn't fit, it has a life of its own. It makes me think of Symbolist painters like Odilon Redon, who were also interested in the dreamlike and the mysterious. But Munch brings something else, a rawness, an openness, and that’s what makes it so powerful. The meaning is slippery, it shifts as you look.