Caféinterieur met klanten en serveerster 1925

Jean Emile Laboureur made this print, *Caféinterieur met klanten en serveerster*, but we don’t know exactly when. Looking at how he's hatched these lines, and how they build up the forms, I get a real sense of process. It's like he’s thinking aloud with the tool in his hand. The whole scene is built up out of tone, out of these carefully placed lines. I like the way the figures are both present and absent, solid and yet somehow ghostlike. Look at the waitress’s skirt, the way it’s all built up of regular hatching that follows the form of her body. Then, nearby, the haphazard mark-making on the floor that disappears into the background, and the light and shade created on the men’s backs. I wonder if Laboureur looked at artists like Picasso. There is a geometry to this composition, but it's worn lightly, with a sense of humor. Art's not about answers, right? It’s about how we see, and how many ways there are to see something.