Untitled (Surreal Abstraction) 1936

Thomas Brownell Eldred made this untitled surreal abstraction in 1936. It’s a lithograph, so I picture him drawing with a grease crayon on a big heavy stone, building up layers of tone with hatching and cross-hatching. He seems to be in the thrall of some personal mythology, as one is when creating a composition like this. What a dreamscape! It reminds me of Picasso or Leger, maybe Gorky, and other artists of the period who were into biomorphic abstraction. The figures have this weird, elastic distortion, especially the giant woman who dominates the composition. Is she swimming? Dreaming? What is she thinking? Eldred might have been working through something; a feeling or idea he couldn’t get at directly. I feel like so many artists are in this ongoing conversation, riffing off of, and responding to one another. It's like the best game of telephone, ever.