The Death of Venus 1938

Julien Albert made this print, "The Death of Venus," using black ink on paper. It's all jagged and shadowy like a charcoal nightmare with surrealist architecture. I feel a sympathy for Albert here. I can see him working away on this plate—maybe inking, scratching, and re-inking. This is how one shape appears from another, shifting and emerging through trial, error, and intuition. Look at the surface, how the ink is denser and scratchier in some areas. These marks, those lines, they speak of struggle, of the material getting in the way and then working with it. They seem to build an ominous, theatrical narrative. The way Albert puts Venus at the bottom of the image in such a vulnerable way, recalls earlier paintings from artists like Manet or Gerome who showed the female figure in moments of crisis. It’s like he’s in conversation with them and their treatment of women in art. This piece, like so much work, reminds me that artists are in an ongoing exchange of ideas across time, always inspiring one another's creativity.