Third Bucolic: The Stakes 1955

Jacques Villon made this etching called "Third Bucolic: The Stakes," sometime in the 20th century, with a combination of soft and hard grounds, and a lot of elbow grease, I imagine. Look at the way Villon has layered different scenes and motifs – animals, figures, landscapes – almost like a collage of memories or dreams. I can imagine him hunched over the plate, scratching and biting, adding line after line to create a sense of depth, movement and texture, as if he's trying to capture the very essence of life itself. The pink and gray tones give it a kind of dreamlike quality, as if the whole scene is shimmering and fading at the same time. He’s playing with Cubism, obviously, and with Renaissance painting, and a little bit of Art Nouveau, and he's probably looking at what Picasso was doing, but doing his own thing, finding his own voice. It makes me think of how artists are always in conversation with each other, across time and space, borrowing ideas, pushing boundaries, and creating something new and unique.