Das leere Café (The Empty Café) 1918

Walter Gramatté made "The Empty Cafe" with ink and colored pencil on paper. It looks like he was trying to capture a feeling more than a scene, and I get it. Sometimes the mood of a place is more real than the stuff in it. I love the scratchy lines he's using, like he's trying to find the edges of the room, and the weird perspective that tips the whole scene up at you. And the colors! These muted reds and greens that feel like they're vibrating. Did you ever sit somewhere and felt like you were vibrating? It makes me think about other artists, like Soutine, who also twisted things up to show what was really going on inside. You know, it's like painters are always talking to each other across time, and sometimes they yell, and sometimes they whisper, but they're always trying to show us how they see the world, in all its messy, beautiful, and totally confusing ways.