Pantagruel: Le Quatraine sur le probleme de gravitation par Villon 1942

Bernard Reder made this print, called Pantagruel, and it looks like he was really digging into the blackness of the ink to bring it into being. The hanging figure, the text, the scratchy lines—everything is fighting against the dark. I'm thinking about Reder in his studio, maybe in Paris, wrestling with this image. What was he feeling? Maybe a little melancholic, a little mischievous, but also totally committed to the process. The figure itself is so strange and puppet-like, hanging from a rope. There's a tension there between the playful and the macabre, the grotesque and the beautiful. It kind of reminds me of some of Goya’s darker prints. Artists are always riffing off each other, you know? It's like a big conversation across time and space, inspiring each other to push boundaries and explore new ways of seeing. In the end, painting is about embracing the unknown, trusting your instincts, and letting the work lead you where it needs to go.