Reading Art: Self-Portrait With Model by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

A vivid portrait and one of the high-points of German Expressionism

Self-Portrait With Model (1910) by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Oil on canvas. 150 × 100 cm. Kunsthalle Hamburg, Germany. Image source Wikimedia Commons

When I look at this painting, a pleasurable sensation of anarchy gathers in me. The image has a glorious disruptive quality about it — you might almost say an aggression — which is simultaneously stirred and soothed by its wildly optimistic…