Gothic Virgin 1912

Walter Pach made this print, Gothic Virgin, most likely in 1912. It's all about the scratchy, almost nervous marks that give form to the sculpture. I can almost see Pach circling the statue, his hand moving across the plate, trying to capture the essence of this medieval object. I wonder what he was thinking, what he felt, when he made this? He probably thought about surface, about how to make a hard material look like fabric. And look at the way he defines the folds of her dress, with those tiny, insistent lines. It’s like he’s trying to build the form from the inside out. It reminds me a little of Odilon Redon’s dark, dreamlike lithographs, where form emerges from a sea of darkness. Artists, you know, we're all in conversation, borrowing and stealing and transforming each other's ideas across time. This print invites us to consider how artists see, feel, and think through their materials, and to appreciate the beauty that can emerge from uncertainty.