The Shooting Gallery VI 1940

Toyen drew The Shooting Gallery VI with ink and paper. The sharp lines and stippled textures create a dreamscape of surreal proportions. It makes you wonder, what kind of world breeds such uncanny taxidermies? I get the sense that Toyen really enjoyed drawing this stuff—the rough, scratchy lines, the careful arrangement of objects, each one distinct and bizarre. I’m sure there was a lot of looking back and forth, shifting this, adjusting that. The birds all appear to be looking elsewhere, as if avoiding something. It’s as if the artist built a stage, and now the scene is set for something deeply weird. What interests me most is the broken screen; it makes me think about all the great painters who used mirrors and windows as devices to show the inner and outer world—but this one is broken. Still, it reflects the strange dream state within. All of art feels like this to me: a strange hall of mirrors, broken and beautiful.