The Village of Mougins (Le Village de Mougins) 1934

Jacques Villon made this etching, The Village of Mougins, and the process of it, all those lines, tells a story about seeing. Look at how Villon makes form and space with nothing but hatched lines, like he’s building the village out of pure thought. The ink isn’t exactly thick, but the effect is dense; those criss-crossing lines create the form, but the image is equally about what isn’t there, the negative space, the gaps in between. The way the lines angle in different directions, that creates such interesting visual texture, like you could almost feel the buildings and trees. There’s something very Cezanne about the faceted approach to the landscape. Villon, like Cezanne, is trying to capture not just what the village looks like, but how we perceive it, how our minds make sense of what our eyes see. It’s a reminder that art isn’t about perfect representation, it’s about exploring the possibilities of seeing.