Red Cocotte 1914

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner made this pastel artwork, "Red Cocotte", sometime in his career, using strokes of color to conjure a world of figures and faces. The process looks fast, like he's just grabbing at feelings. The surface is all pastel dust, right? I bet if you touched it, you'd get color all over your fingers. Look at how the red of the figure is almost screaming against the purplish background. The strokes are like scribbles, but they build up to something intense. And then you've got these strange faces lurking in the shadows, all angles and stares. It is all about this contrast, the tension between beauty and unease. It reminds me a little of some of Munch's work, that same feeling of being trapped in your own head. Kirchner is not just showing us a scene, he's showing us a state of mind, and in this way, the artwork is always open to interpretation.