Night and Day 1951 - 1954

Stanley William Hayter made this etching, Night and Day, in 1952. What strikes me is how he seems to have let his hand do the thinking. These aren’t shapes so much as lines having a conversation. They twist and loop, tangling and untangling, kind of like thoughts in your head, right? I can see the artist digging into that plate, rerouting the lines, almost as if he were trying to find his way through a maze, or maybe just letting the maze find him. Hayter was interested in surrealism, automatism and chance operations, allowing unconscious gestures to guide his work. I like to think that the act of making this print was its own kind of performance, a dance between intention and accident. This reminds me of other artists, like Joan Miró and André Masson, who were also invested in this idea of the automatic gesture. Artists are always in conversation, even across time. Painting, printmaking—it's all about embracing the unexpected.