Portret van een man 1933

This is Kornél Révész’s “Portret van een man”, we don't know when it was made, but it's been etched onto a plate. Look at the way the artist has built up the image with these tiny lines, almost like he's knitting the face together. You can see the individual marks, each one deliberate, and yet the overall effect is one of softness, of a human presence emerging from the paper. I keep coming back to the glasses - dark and heavy, they interrupt the delicacy of the face, drawing attention to the eyes behind them. It’s like the glasses are there to help us focus, to see more clearly, but they also obscure, creating a sense of mystery. Révész’s portrait reminds me a little of Lucian Freud’s etchings, in the way that he uses line to map the contours of the face. Both artists seem interested in the play of light and shadow, and in the way that it can reveal or conceal the inner life of the sitter. Art is an ongoing conversation and exchange of ideas across time, and there are no fixed meanings.