Deer 1909

Ludwig Heinrich Jungnickel made this print of deer, and when I look at it I think, yes, that’s it – that’s how they are! He’s not trying to trick us with realism. The tonal values are so subtle, it’s like a breath. The deers’ bodies are interlocked; maybe Jungnickel liked the puzzle of the forms, how the deer meet and part from each other. I imagine him, bent over a block of wood, carving into it, slowly revealing the image of these deer. I wonder if he watched them in the wild? Maybe he drew them from memory. It makes me think of other artists who draw animals, like Franz Marc, or even cave paintings. I feel he had a really embodied experience of the animal. He wasn't just trying to describe what they look like; he wanted to show us how they move. Artists are always in conversation, building on what came before.