Badende im Bach 1923

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner created ‘Bathers in the Stream’ using etching, it's all in shades of grey and black. I imagine the way the plate was etched has a lot to do with the atmosphere here. Kirchner is scraping away at this metal plate and in his mind are these bathers; maybe he’s thinking about his relationship to the natural world? The line work has this nervous energy, and these scratchy marks that carve out form and space. Look at the lines that build the figures – how they're kind of clunky and awkward. The perspective seems tilted or off. Kirchner was part of ‘Die Brücke’, right? You can see his printmaking shares concerns with other expressionist painters. But what I think is cool is how Kirchner is able to take the language of painting and push it through this medium. Like all paintings, this print comes out of art history and is in conversation with everything being made now. I think it's a reminder that art doesn't have to be perfect, it's about something much more complex.