Minne in a Rocking Chair c. 1907

Jacques Villon made this intaglio print, Minne in a Rocking Chair, and it's all about lines, scratches, and a kind of haunting light, like a dream barely remembered. I look at this and I imagine Villon, bent over the plate, pushing and pulling the image out of the metal with precise, but also kind of wild, marks. Look at the way the lines gather and spread around her body. Is she reclining or floating? Is the chair actually rocking? You can almost feel him trying to capture something elusive, the ghost of a feeling or a moment. Think about other artists at that time—Picasso, Braque—all wrestling with how to see and show the world in a new way. This is part of that conversation, but with its own quiet, searching voice. It's about seeing, feeling, remembering and the trace left behind.