On the Street c. 1914

Curator: Immediately striking is the palpable sense of alienation; those figures almost seem to cut through the picture plane. Editor: You’ve nailed it. The artist here is Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and what we’re looking at is his etching, "On the Street," created around 1914. Etchings can create these rather jagged lines, as we see here, by using acid to bite into a metal plate to produce the image for printing. Curator: Yes, and notice how Kirchner’s sharp, angular lines extend beyond simply describing form. The medium emphasizes a very palpable anxiety. It certainly reinforces the kind of frenetic unease of modern urban life. Consider the consumption involved in the materials that build those lives and anxieties, everything from the hats and coats depicted to the streets they occupy. Editor: Absolutely, and this aligns perfectly with the Expressionist movement. The context here is early 20th-century Germany, a society undergoing rapid industrialization and modernization. How were the cultural institutions of the time dealing with the subject of rapid cultural shifts? We see this in the print's depiction of anonymous figures—isolated despite being in a crowd, rendered with a critical eye that captures the tensions of a society on the brink. Curator: You see that alienation manifest even in the very process of producing the print; that biting with acid creates a rough, almost violent surface, mirrored by the harsh subject matter. And you even notice in his process, this pushes against earlier forms of print making because etching here facilitates that very gestural form. Editor: Exactly. And, it's important to remember the audience for such work. It was displayed in galleries, yes, but also reproduced in journals, reaching a wide public and fostering debate. The etching as a medium made the piece extremely accessible for the politics it espouses. Curator: It seems fair to suggest, ultimately, that this piece does more than simply reproduce an image; its raw materials really highlight a distinct sensory experience. Editor: I'd agree. Kirchner uses the format to show how urban spaces affect individual psychology and reflect deeper historical and cultural shifts.