Street Scene in front of a Barbershop 1926

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s *Street Scene in front of a Barbershop* is an oil on canvas, and the artist is really pushing paint around here. It's almost as if the scene is observed through a heat sensor with its lurid colour choices and stark contrasts. The bodies are built with these thick, deliberate strokes, and the paint is so present that it almost becomes the subject itself. There is a palpable tension between flatness and depth; the figures overlap in the picture plane but simultaneously seem to press forward in space. Look at the bold swaths of colour making up the floor plane, the blue next to the pink: there’s a real vibrancy that makes the image feel alive. Kirchner’s contemporary, Max Beckmann comes to mind. Both painters use a claustrophobic compression of space and jarring colour to unsettle the viewer, but with Kirchner I sense less cynicism, and more manic energy. With paintings like this, both artists remind us that art is, above all, a process, and that ambiguity can be a source of power.