Rue des Solitaires 1922

Georges Rouault made this print, Rue des Solitaires, using aquatint and roulette, a process kind of like controlled chaos. It looks like it’s mostly blacks and whites, but actually, there’s a whole world of greys in between. Look at how Rouault creates this brooding atmosphere with his textures, like that almost-black sky looming over the buildings. The paint application has this great, chunky feel, especially around the edges of the buildings where it looks like he’s been digging into the plate. There’s so much juicy materiality; you can almost feel the artist's hand at work. Check out that dark slash cutting across the street, it is so bold, so decisive, it creates this uneasy feeling, like something bad is about to happen. I see a connection between Rouault’s dark, brooding atmosphere and the graphic, raw quality of someone like Otto Dix. Both artists wrestle with the darker sides of life, and remind us that art can be as much about the questions as the answers.