Frontispiece for Balzac, "La Bourse" 1941

Imre Reiner made this frontispiece for Balzac’s ‘La Bourse’ using ink on paper. It's this sepia tone, like looking at something old, like memory. You know? Reiner wasn't trying to hide anything here. He was very much feeling his way through, trying out different approaches to the same problem. I love that you can see the hand of the artist here. Look at the bottom left, at the framed still life. It's all about line. The fan, the vase, the rose, all contained by the sharp rectangles of a frame. It is like a stage set: the objects set up in front of a curtain. It feels like he's trying to tell you something about how images are made, and what they can do. You see this sensibility in Picasso too, especially his prints, where the history of mark-making is right there on the surface. It reminds us that art is an ongoing conversation, a back and forth between artists and ideas, a continuous questioning.