Nocturne 1944

This small etching, Nocturne, by André Masson, looks like it’s been bitten by acid into the metal plate. I can almost smell the chemicals. There’s a strange, almost unsettling quality about it. It's hard to tell what's going on here, but it seems to be a weird collision of body parts and decorative elements. It feels like a dreamscape—or maybe a nightmare—where familiar forms melt into something else entirely. I wonder what Masson was thinking about when he made this? Maybe he was trying to capture the chaotic and irrational world of the unconscious? There's a real sense of struggle, a feeling of pushing against boundaries, which I find super relatable as an artist. Masson was part of the Surrealist movement, and this piece seems to perfectly capture their interest in dreams and the subconscious. It reminds me of some of the weirder stuff that Picasso and Miró were doing at the time, all of them riffing off each other’s ideas. All these guys were in conversation, pushing each other to see the world in new and unexpected ways.