Self-Portrait in a Fur Coat 1913

Lovis Corinth made this self-portrait, "Self-Portrait in a Fur Coat," with etching. The marks here are raw and immediate, a kind of visual diary entry. You can almost feel him hunched over the plate, scratching the lines into existence. There's a real push and pull with the medium. Look at the hatching that defines his fur coat, it is gestural, confident, but also kind of clumsy. That's what's so great about etching: it is immediate, and you can see the hand of the artist so clearly. It's like the drawing is breathing! In the background, Corinth sketches the rough form of a nude, which is so faint it becomes less about depiction, and more about the feeling of the studio as a space for creation, a room for thinking through making. It puts me in mind of late Rembrandt, who knew how to work that needle to reveal the inner life. Art is just a conversation, right?