Colosses de Memnon (Thebes) 1911

This print, Colosses de Memnon (Thebes), by Pierre Roche, shows two ancient stone sculptures, rising from a landscape. I imagine Roche standing before these giant figures, thinking about time, and light, and the sheer weight of history, his hand moving across the plate, guided by a kind of reverence. What was it like to try to capture the presence of such old beings? There's a subtle color palette at play—earthy browns and oranges—giving a sense of the desert heat and the way light can transform stone. The way he uses line is just beautiful; look at the way it creates texture, suggesting the rough surfaces of the statues. It makes me think about other artists interested in antiquity, like Cy Twombly, who saw the past not as a fixed thing, but as something always in motion. The process of making a print leaves space for the unexpected, for happy accidents. It is as if artists are always talking to each other, across time, through the language of mark-making, color, and form.