Tiger=Zohrn=Riesen=Gletscher,=Hochalp=Stok, in Nordwest=Indien 1917

This drawing, "Tiger=Zohrn=Riesen=Gletscher,=Hochalp=Stok, in Nordwest=Indien," by Adolf Wölfli, is like a little world made with colored pencils—a kind of obsessive, visionary landscape. I can imagine Wölfli hunched over this piece, meticulously building up layers of color and pattern. There are mountains striped with red and yellow, little faces, and architectural details, all framed by a border that feels both decorative and like it's holding everything together. The surface is dense with information, and yet there is an underlying, playful rhythm. Those little faces, for instance, they remind me of Paul Klee's playful figurations, or maybe even some of the anonymous faces you find in folk art. But here, they're part of something stranger, a personal cosmology. It's as if he is building his own world, piece by piece. And ultimately, this is what artists do, right? We borrow, we steal, we transform, and we make it our own.