Christian Krohg, The Sick Girl

Christian Krohg, The Sick Girl

This work is very interesting to me. It is both fantastic and sinister at the same time. In traditional art, the subjects would be stoic and content. They were made to look like they carried themselves with an air of sophistication. Additionally, these subjects were generally well off people who had the paintings commissioned in order to show their importance and make them appear superior. Krohg does not do this. Like a true expressionist, he conveys an overwhelming amount of emotion within this picture. In opposition to the historic stoics, The Sick Girl is anything but. Personally, I believe that this shift makes the expressionist movement one of the most significant in modern art. Within portraits, it changed their function from commonplace, photograph like displays on household walls, to reflections and conversations on the human race and the human condition. Sick Girl is an exceptional conveyance of this for a few reasons. First off, the subject is a young girl. This may have happened from time to time in older portraits, but the ones that were given significance were those primarily of the men in the household. Secondly, the girl is sick. Because she is in a vulnerable position, she is not placed in a position where she looks superior or even worthy of a painting. Krohg is portraying suffering through her and making her dilema an issue which is brought to life how it hadn't been in the past. From this pivotal point in modern art emerged a long line of portraits as an art for, not the work an artist does just for the commission. As an artist today, portraits are one of my favorite subjects to paint. The transcendental nature of emotion and expression are essential parts of the human condition and as a result, humans are a part of art that is now the subject of a majority of works.