Gezicht op een tuin bij een huis 1884 - 1947

Edgar Chahine made this print of a garden view near a house with what looks like etching, a kind of detailed drawing with a needle on a metal plate. I can imagine Chahine outside, maybe in the late afternoon, squinting to observe the scene, deciding which lines to commit to the plate, which to leave out. And the pressure of the stylus, those marks made one at a time…each one must count! I think about the history of mark-making in art, from cave paintings to Instagram—artists have always been driven to record and interpret the world around them. The composition, with its orderly rows of vines, feels very composed, very still and sure. The house is serene. But the sky and foliage are a tangle of scratches! It’s a reminder that even in the most peaceful scenes, there’s always some chaos lurking around the edges. And in art, it’s those messy, unpredictable elements that often make it so interesting.