Caribbean Landscape 1941

Andre Masson created this drawing, Caribbean Landscape, using ink on paper. Masson’s graphic style, evident here, is one of flowing automatism. Though he made paintings too, drawing was his favored method, and you can see that he really let the medium speak. The work is very linear, and the artist's marks and the making process are evident in the final product. With its schematic style and whimsical content, this work seems to suggest an encounter between the organic and the engineered. Strange insects and crustaceans populate the scene, their segmented bodies echoing the geometric volumes in the background. It’s as if the Caribbean landscape has been invaded, not only by a foreign eye, but by the industrial revolution itself. Masson’s emphasis on line as an element of structure lends the work a provisional quality. A feeling that the world itself is contingent and could be otherwise, a feeling not unfamiliar to the modern world.