Poodle 1912

Moriz Jung made this small woodcut of a Poodle, in black ink on paper with a soft blue background. I’m imagining Jung in his studio, maybe somewhere in Vienna, carefully carving the image into the wood block, each line a deliberate stroke. The entire dog is essentially a mass of tight, wiry marks. It's really something, the amount of detail he gets into that form. I find myself looking for the dog in the marks, and looking for the marks that make a dog. I wonder what he was thinking as he worked on this piece? Was he a dog lover? Did he have a particular poodle in mind, maybe a fancy show dog with its absurd haircut? This reminds me of other graphic artists like Grosz or Kirchner who were working at this time, with that same interest in the everyday but also a bit of an edge, you know? Like they’re seeing something others aren’t, or maybe just willing to show it. All these artists are in conversation, trying to figure out what it means to be alive and making art in a world that’s changing so fast.