Myself, Sitting in a Room, 1924

The forehead in wrinkles, the right corner of the mouth drooping, one eyebrow raised, the prominent nose, the disproportionate head with a scrawny neck sticking out of the wide collar, the gaze fixed on the sheet, the whole body tense—this is how Rudolf Wacker (1893–1939) presents himself in the cognitive and creative act of drawing. Myself, Sitting in a Room of 1924 is an apt self-reflection of the Bregenz, Vorarlberg-born artist. The facial expression can also be discovered in portrait photographs. Apart from the witty exaggeration, it corresponds to the character of the self-caricaturing sensitive artist, as do the much too small delicate hands. With quick charcoal strokes, he positions the depiction of himself in an interior that looks thrown out of joint: the lamp dangling from the ceiling, the table with a vase, and the darkness of the surroundings closing in on him in vigorous crisscross hatching strokes all draw a world of shifting axes that seems about to come apart.

MH, 2021