Metamorphose (Metamorphosis) 1963

Andre Masson made this print, Metamorphose, and like the title suggests, it's all about change and transformation. Look at the green; it's not just flat, it's like a living texture, a mossy world where things are growing and evolving. The line is really where it’s at, though. It's scratchy and confident, describing forms that seem to be caught between one thing and another, like a face turning into foliage. I think about the surrealists and how they wanted to get into the unconscious, and how maybe drawing like this was a way to get there - a kind of automatic writing that isn't really written at all, but drawn. That dark patch near the top, is it a shadow or a solid form? Who knows! Masson shares something with Joan Miró here, with his biomorphic shapes and playful spirit. Both encourage us to see things not as fixed, but as always becoming something else.