Self Portrait

Lovis Corinth

1908

Brush and black ink with black chalk on heavy beige cardboard

Minneapolis Institute of Art

A man with a mustache stares intensely at the viewer, holding a bundle of sticks or brushes in his left hand. The drawing is rendered in black ink and chalk on a beige cardboard. An intense competitor and a true believer in willful superiority, Corinth depicted himself as the epitome of the powerful, driven artist. With assuredness undergirded by decades of academic practice, he applied strokes of black ink—thinned out in varying degrees—that slash, dance, and sometimes scrub. Where he miscalculated, he made corrections, scraping the soft, textured surface of the thick cardboard. Finally, he shaded the background with broad strokes of black chalk, making his presence glow. His wide-eyed countenance, coupled with the ferocious intensity of his execution, lends a slightly crazed undertone to this Übermensch (s