Our Favorite Images

Albrecht Dürer's Desperate Man, 1515. I love this print because it shows the possibilities of the etching medium so well in its sketchy execution. Dürer etched in Iron, which was a much less flexible metal than copper, which later became standard. The print shows five people whose relation to each other is strange, both physically - in space - and psychologically. This, combined with the scribbled landscape in the background and the absence of an identifiable narrative subject, all suggest that this was an experimental test plate. But Dürer nevertheless created a masterwork. The untitled print is apocryphically named after the man in the center who seems to desperately pull his hair or scratch his head while hiding his face for the viewer.