Deformation c. 1921

Karl Wiener made this drawing, Deformation, on paper, and you can tell he was really feeling the materials. The way he's layered those wax crayon marks makes you think about artmaking as an almost sculptural process. The texture is really interesting here. See how the colored marks sit on top of the gray shading? It's a game of hide-and-seek. The gray looks like it was applied with some force, maybe even a bit rough, while the coloured marks are light and playful. Look at that arc of pink and purple – it's almost floating, right? And the title, "Deformation," it’s almost ironic because there's so much playful energy here. I think of someone like Paul Klee, playing with the line between abstraction and representation, and using humor to get there. Ultimately, Wiener's drawing reminds us that art is always a conversation, full of surprising twists and turns. It’s never about one single meaning, but about opening up a space for possibility.