The Shooting Gallery IV 1940

Curator: Good morning. Today we’re looking at "The Shooting Gallery IV," a 1940 ink and paper drawing by the Czech surrealist artist, Toyen. Editor: Well, my immediate impression is…unease. The stark black and white, the desolate landscape, and that colossal, screaming head... it’s all very unsettling. What’s happening here? Curator: It is certainly arresting. Toyen, who spent her life defying gender norms and actively resisting oppression, offers us a surreal scene with unsettling symbolism. Note the floating orbs—they appear almost like scattered marbles or… ammunition, and the birdcages dotted across the plane, some empty, some occupied. Editor: Cages, always with their historical echoes. I think here we must ask, whose freedom is being curtailed? And is that screaming head a victim, or is it somehow complicit? Considering the rise of fascism at the time, it’s difficult not to see political undertones. The face, distorted and isolated, can also be a reflection on the fracturing of individual identity in the face of oppressive regimes. Curator: Indeed. It evokes the fragmented self, laid bare. But for me, it’s also a visceral representation of existential pain. Toyen was exploring inner landscapes, psychological states rendered in haunting, symbolic imagery. Look at the way the head is almost cracking apart, the very essence of being in turmoil. It strikes me as profoundly personal, as if I am seeing a window into someone’s private despair. Editor: And that despair is never just individual, is it? It’s inextricably linked to the broader structures of power and oppression. We cannot view her individual pain separately from the political, which no doubt compounded her anxieties as a queer, politically active artist, in such precarious times. I also keep coming back to these objects, these almost sinister toys on this barren playground. Curator: They lend a particularly eerie dimension, don’t they? And the sparseness of the composition intensifies the overall feeling of isolation. Editor: Ultimately, Toyen encourages us to confront not only our individual pain but our complicity. The scene offers more questions than answers, unsettling our perception of reality, while highlighting vulnerability amidst oppression. Curator: The drawing is really so charged and incredibly sad... It feels like a potent meditation on the precariousness of existence and of finding your individual identity amidst oppressive conditions. It invites contemplation, even long after one turns away from it.