Schlemihls Begegnung mit dem Schatten 1915

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner made this woodcut, titled "Schlemihls Begegnung mit dem Schatten", using a range of colors including yellow, blue, red, and black. I can imagine him wrestling with the block, carving away at the wood, each gouge a deliberate act of revealing the image. It is like Kirchner is excavating a memory or a dream, one layer at a time. Looking at the blue figure and its dark counterpart, I see a dialogue between the self and the shadow, a dance of light and darkness. The bold, angular lines remind me of the Expressionists' desire to capture raw emotion. Kirchner would've been inspired by others such as Edvard Munch, who was also trying to make visible internal states of feeling. Artists are always talking to each other, across time. Painting is all about uncertainty, and that's where the magic happens.