The Tragediennes Come to the Ocean 1959

Benton Spruance made "The Tragediennes Come to the Ocean" with lithographic ink, and the way he used it makes me wonder if he was thinking about theater, about ritual, about the human form in these strange landscapes. Look at the stark contrasts and the ghostly figures emerging from the shadows. I can almost feel Spruance wrestling with the stone, trying to coax these figures into being. The stone pushes back. It must have been a kind of battle, a dance between intention and accident. The figures almost seem to dissolve into the sea, their bodies rendered with such expressive, loose lines. Each mark feels like a whisper, a suggestion, leaving so much to our imaginations. Think about Goya or Kathe Kollwitz, other printmakers who used the medium to convey intense emotion. There's a similar sense of unease here, a feeling that something profound is unfolding. It's like Spruance is inviting us to witness a private, almost sacred moment. We're all just trying to figure it out as we go along, borrowing from each other, remixing, reimagining. Each artwork is an echo in a long, ongoing conversation.