German artist Max Klinger (1857-1920) produced 16 print series in his lifetime, the most famous one being Ein Handschuh / A Glove, 1881, which is in the collection of the McMaster Museum of Art and on view this summer in the Glove, the Car and the Mirror exhibition.

In this portfolio of ten prints, Klinger traces the journey of a single white glove through an almost film-like sequence, beginning in reality and morphing into a dreamscape through different settings.

A Glove begins at a roller skating rink in Berlin. A beautiful young woman loses her glove and a man, Klinger himself, swoops down to retrieve it. This intimate object triggers a series of elaborate and fantastic visions of longing, obsession and loss. In the end, a monster steals the glove, love is unrequited.

Produced during the highpoint of the Symbolist period, Klinger’s work also “anticipates” Freud’s psychoanalysis.