Science, c. 1902

In a thinker’s pose with its left hand raised musingly to its forehead, clutching a heavy book under its right arm, a chimpanzee is striding through the plane. Stepping over an obstacle, its little foot treads on a neuralgic point – the genitals of a naked male body lying stretched out on its back on the arched plane. Using pencil, Alfred Kubin (1877–1959) noted the title Science at the center of the margin below his India ink and watercolor drawing. The sprawling body of the reclining human is inserted diagonally into the nearly square format. The knees and the visible part of the legs are seen as if from above; the belly, the thorax, the throat and the chin from below. The head is thrown back, the neck hyperextended. The figure is resting on the ground with outstretched arms, reclining on a knoll in complete passivity and protruding beyond the horizon line. Its face is turned up to the sinister, overcast sky. Is man the object of or the obstacle to this search for knowledge? Or is the ape exploring something else entirely? Once more, the multi-talented artist Kubin demonstrates his subtle and razor-sharp humor: With great elegance, his graphic work brings together the insults humanity has suffered through the findings of Kopernikus, Darwin and Freud.

MH, 2021