Head of a Man in a Fur-Cap 1943 - 1944

Arnold Peter Weisz-Kubínčan made this drawing of a man’s head in a fur cap with ink, and you can see the quickness of it in the confident strokes. What I like about this is the way he seems to be thinking through form with these marks, letting the process guide him. The image emerges from a jumble of black lines, a furious thicket of hatched marks that suggests a face and a hat. The ink is opaque and sits on the surface of the paper. Some of the marks are more gestural, particularly the thin, scratchy lines around the edges, while the blocks of solid black seem more deliberate, describing the bulk of the hat. Notice the way the hatching varies in density, creating areas of light and shadow. It's like the artist is building the image up from fragments, letting the marks stand in for the whole. It reminds me a bit of the way Picabia would make these seemingly chaotic drawings that somehow coalesce into an image. It is like they are both having a conversation about how to describe a subject in the fewest, most expressive marks. There is no right or wrong answer, it's about looking and seeing what emerges.