Just back from taking the family to a wonderful retrospective of Barlach’s work–both graphics and sculpture. I’d only seen the sculpture in photographs before, but actually to stand close enough to feel time and space sag a bit–experiencing the volumes and the masses with your physical being and on your pulses, as it were–was wonderful. There was a presence–a heft–in even the smallest work–that kept me riveted. Interesting too that the stance of his “The Berserker” appears to have been taken from photographs of Kabuki actors.