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Lot Essay
Part of André Masson’s initial, ground-breaking series of sand paintings, Homme et femme is an extremely rare and important work from the key period of the artist’s involvement with the Surrealist group. Masson was among the first of the Surrealist artists to attempt to capture a spontaneous and unconscious flight of ideas in visual form. Embracing the automatic techniques that André Breton and Phillipe Soupault had first developed in their writing of The Magnetic Fields, Masson translated their unconscious automatism first into drawing and later, painting. There are only twenty four known sand paintings by Masson from this early period of experimentation, many of which are now held in major museum collections around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Kunstmuseum in Bern.
Apparently inspired by the action of waves on a beach and the undulating motifs created in the sand, Masson’s revolutionary paintings used the medium of sand and glue to allow the artist the painterly and unconscious freedom and fluidity that had previously only been discovered with pen and ink. Responding to Breton’s assertion that ‘if the depths of our mind contain within them strange forces capable of augmenting those on the surface, or of waging a victorious battle against them, there is every reason to seize them,’ Masson aimed to translate these ‘forces’ through his work into visual images (A. Breton, ‘Manifesto of Surrealism,’ 1924, reproduced in C. Harrison and P. Wood, eds., Art in Theory, 1900-1990: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, London, 1992, p. 434). Developing a precise meditative ritual, which he took further into the realm of the unconscious in 1926 while staying in Sanary-sur-Mer near Toulon, the artist applied glue randomly to the surface of the canvas, before covering the work with sand from the beach. Finally, Masson would spontaneously add paint, generating random but persuasive patterns out of which he would begin to articulate forms. This technique, which has echoes in the ritual sand paintings of the Navajo Indians of North America, enabled the artist to express his unconscious in an uninterrupted flow, without having to reload a pen or brush, to conjure powerful psychic incarnations from the labyrinthine complexity of his own mind.
In order to achieve this ‘magic,’ Masson developed a precise meditative practice that he developed into the following ritualised procedure: ‘a) The first condition was to liberate the mind from all apparent ties. Entry into a state similar to a trance, b) Abandonment to interior tumult, c) Rapidity of writing. These dispositions once attained, under my fingers involuntary figures were born and most often disturbing, disquieting, unqualifiable. The slightest reflection broke the charm. But when in the end images appeared, I could not prevent a movement of shame - an indescribable unease – combined with a vengeful exultation, like a victory carried over some oppressive power’ (A. Masson, ‘Le Peintre et ses Fantasmes,’ in Le rebelle du Surréalisme, Paris, 1976). Through the results of this mystical approach to painting Masson discovered that his work ‘almost always had an erotic foundation. An eroticism that could have been that of the cosmos, but whose element was Eros’ (A. Masson quoted in Surrealism Unbound, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 2001, p. 105). In addition, he found that the images his paintings seemed to invoke often described a disturbing world of mythological conflict and violence that almost certainly reflected his suffering during the First World War.
In the present painting, Masson couples his subconsciously-driven ‘automatic’ handling of form with a delicate, linear refinement, delineating two figures – the man and woman of the title – through a dynamic, febrile line. Around the ankles of the amorous couple are at least two distinguishable fish, which bite and snap at their heels, a leitmotif which appeared in a number of Masson’s sand paintings during these years. Homme et femme was purchased by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler in 1927, shortly after the work’s conception. A pioneering champion of the Cubist movement, and renowned for his exceptional and progressive taste, Kahnweiler found in Masson a lifelong friend, and dedicated much of his career to promoting the artist. It was acquired from Kahnweiler by the Swiss collector Josef Mueller in 1927 and has remained in the same family collection ever since.
Apparently inspired by the action of waves on a beach and the undulating motifs created in the sand, Masson’s revolutionary paintings used the medium of sand and glue to allow the artist the painterly and unconscious freedom and fluidity that had previously only been discovered with pen and ink. Responding to Breton’s assertion that ‘if the depths of our mind contain within them strange forces capable of augmenting those on the surface, or of waging a victorious battle against them, there is every reason to seize them,’ Masson aimed to translate these ‘forces’ through his work into visual images (A. Breton, ‘Manifesto of Surrealism,’ 1924, reproduced in C. Harrison and P. Wood, eds., Art in Theory, 1900-1990: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, London, 1992, p. 434). Developing a precise meditative ritual, which he took further into the realm of the unconscious in 1926 while staying in Sanary-sur-Mer near Toulon, the artist applied glue randomly to the surface of the canvas, before covering the work with sand from the beach. Finally, Masson would spontaneously add paint, generating random but persuasive patterns out of which he would begin to articulate forms. This technique, which has echoes in the ritual sand paintings of the Navajo Indians of North America, enabled the artist to express his unconscious in an uninterrupted flow, without having to reload a pen or brush, to conjure powerful psychic incarnations from the labyrinthine complexity of his own mind.
In order to achieve this ‘magic,’ Masson developed a precise meditative practice that he developed into the following ritualised procedure: ‘a) The first condition was to liberate the mind from all apparent ties. Entry into a state similar to a trance, b) Abandonment to interior tumult, c) Rapidity of writing. These dispositions once attained, under my fingers involuntary figures were born and most often disturbing, disquieting, unqualifiable. The slightest reflection broke the charm. But when in the end images appeared, I could not prevent a movement of shame - an indescribable unease – combined with a vengeful exultation, like a victory carried over some oppressive power’ (A. Masson, ‘Le Peintre et ses Fantasmes,’ in Le rebelle du Surréalisme, Paris, 1976). Through the results of this mystical approach to painting Masson discovered that his work ‘almost always had an erotic foundation. An eroticism that could have been that of the cosmos, but whose element was Eros’ (A. Masson quoted in Surrealism Unbound, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 2001, p. 105). In addition, he found that the images his paintings seemed to invoke often described a disturbing world of mythological conflict and violence that almost certainly reflected his suffering during the First World War.
In the present painting, Masson couples his subconsciously-driven ‘automatic’ handling of form with a delicate, linear refinement, delineating two figures – the man and woman of the title – through a dynamic, febrile line. Around the ankles of the amorous couple are at least two distinguishable fish, which bite and snap at their heels, a leitmotif which appeared in a number of Masson’s sand paintings during these years. Homme et femme was purchased by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler in 1927, shortly after the work’s conception. A pioneering champion of the Cubist movement, and renowned for his exceptional and progressive taste, Kahnweiler found in Masson a lifelong friend, and dedicated much of his career to promoting the artist. It was acquired from Kahnweiler by the Swiss collector Josef Mueller in 1927 and has remained in the same family collection ever since.