Twee staande figuren, mogelijk dansers 1921 - 1922

Isaac Israels made this sketch of two standing figures, possibly dancers, using graphite on paper. Look how tentative the lines are, like he's feeling his way around the subject. He is not quite sure what he’s seeing, so he draws it again and again, searching. I like the one on the right, caught in a flurry of marks—maybe mid-twirl? You can see the weight of the body and the suggestion of movement. It reminds me of Degas’s ballerinas, but here the artist isn’t trying to capture the beauty of the dance so much as the feeling of it. I think that Israels was searching for something in the act of drawing. Each line is like a question, a “what if?” and the whole drawing is this open, unresolved space. It reminds me of the sketches that artists like Daumier made – they were all in conversation. It’s this really beautiful, generous kind of art-making, and it always leaves room for us, the viewers, to join the dance, too.