Soldaat stelt burgers gerust tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog 1916

Théophile Alexandre Steinlen made this lithograph during the First World War, and you can see it’s all about the touch of the crayon or pencil on the lithographic stone. It’s kind of gray, all these marks, but so emotionally charged. Look at the way Steinlen uses these sketchy lines to build up the forms of the figures, especially the soldier’s uniform and the worried faces of the citizens. The texture of the lithograph gives everything a kind of hazy, dreamlike quality, like a memory fading at the edges. The emotion is held within the marks, not overwrought. The way he captures the human condition reminds me a little of Käthe Kollwitz, another artist who knew how to make emotion through a very few lines. In art, these conversations go on, artists looking at each other, and thinking, yeah, I get it, but what if I did this? Art is never finished, you know?