Wols Dans le sable (enlisé, une seule main surgit) 1932

Curator: Here we have "Dans le sable (enlisé, une seule main surgit)" from 1932, by the artist Wols. The piece primarily employs watercolor, though one can detect hints of coloured pencil, a true Surrealist image. Editor: My first impression is of an alien landscape, vaguely botanical but also desperately human. A world between waking and dreaming where forms suggest, rather than declare. It's a bit unnerving, I must admit. Curator: Well, unnerving gets us closer to its socio-historical context. Wols, while never formally aligning with any one group, found affinity with the Surrealist movement. Note here the influence of automatism as medium, with that kind of spontaneous outpouring on the paper as a material thing of itself. We might ask how he created that sensation? Editor: Sensation indeed! I sense…entrapment. The lone hand reaching up, the vaguely floral shapes contorted in the landscape – there's a feeling of something beautiful being suffocated. Or, conversely, of life bursting out from underneath the sands of ordinary life! Which I feel very acutely right now… Curator: Yes, and we see here that underpainting, that initial layer informing what is imposed on it subsequently. That's the material operation of production. How do those base coats, perhaps hastily applied, inform the subsequent composition. Is it intentional, or simply what it becomes given limitations of the material. Editor: Oh, certainly intentional, with a pinch of happy accident, of course. Like a poem accidentally stumbled upon at a forgotten bookstall. A beautiful poem written in mud and ink. Curator: Right, but not accidental as a negation of production. Rather a celebration of material conditions within that process, that interplay of pigment, paper, intention, and social constraint. A key thread across surrealism... Editor: I see, rather feel, the tension between control and freedom that this work embodies. It makes me wonder if Wols himself felt as lost in the sands as the figure in this drawing seems to be. Curator: An insightful observation, I feel. Editor: An honour! Now then… shall we unearth some more artistic gems, before we too sink completely into the sands of time?