A lone figure stands in shallow water, one arm flung sideways for balance. Beyond the waterline, trees rise into a darkness that gives nothing away. The scene ought to be simple. Alfred Kubin makes it difficult to leave.
Look first at the figure. The pale body is the clearest thing in the picture, yet its movement is hard to read. Is this person wading toward shore, or farther into the water? Has something stirred beneath the surface? Kubin gives us the instant of alarm and withholds its cause. The ripples travel outward; our eyes search the trees for whatever might have sent the figure off balance.
That uncertainty is the drawing’s strength. The water is shallow enough to stand in, but the pale foreground erases the legs. The dark trunks offer no shelter. Even the open space around the figure feels occupied. Kubin has made a landscape behave like a thought one cannot shake.
Kubin knew how much darkness to leave on the page. The Museum of Modern Art notes that his youthful apprenticeship with a photographer informed his handling of light and shadow. In this image, the figure seems to emerge from the murk as though the scene were developing before our eyes.
The effect is delicate, but the feeling it leaves is stubborn. There is also a tender possibility here. Perhaps nothing waits among the trees. Perhaps the figure has merely slipped on the bottom of a pond. Kubin allows that reading, too. His finest work gives fear its familiar shape: a person alone, uncertain of what has happened, trying to regain a footing.
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