Portrait E.D. (Eugène Duchamp) 1913

This is Jacques Villon's Portrait E.D. (Eugène Duchamp), and it's like looking at a face through a shattered mirror. You can almost feel Villon there, hatching those tiny lines, building form out of pure mark-making. I've always thought that drawing, especially with ink, is like a tightrope walk. One wrong move and whoops! But here, Villon seems to relish that tension, that push and pull. Look how he uses those lines, sometimes dense and dark, other times light as a whisper, to sculpt the planes of Eugène's face. It's not just about likeness; it's about digging deeper, about revealing the architecture beneath the skin. I imagine Villon, his brow furrowed, squinting at his brother, Marcel Duchamp. He's not just seeing a face but also the essence, the spirit, boiling it down to these fractured planes. It makes you wonder, doesn't it, about the connection between these brothers, this silent, intense exchange happening right there on the page?