La Catastrophe 1907

"La Catastrophe" by Théophile Alexandre Steinlen looks like it was made with crayon or charcoal, something immediate and smudgy. The tone is dark, like a bruise, and the image seems to emerge out of this gloom. Look closely, and you can see how Steinlen built the image through layers of marks, a kind of shorthand for detail. It’s this piling up that creates the feeling of a crowd, a mass of people pushed together by circumstance. The figures are only half formed, their features suggested rather than defined. Except for the eyes. The eyes have a piercing quality, giving the work an emotional intensity. I keep thinking about Goya, or Käthe Kollwitz, artists who transformed the personal into something universal, a lament. "La Catastrophe" embraces this kind of ambiguity. The work is less about depicting a specific event, and more about conveying the emotional weight of human suffering. It is an open conversation, inviting us to bring our own experiences to the table.