The Hatpin (L'épingle à chapeau) 1909

This is 'The Hatpin' by Jacques Villon, an etching on paper. The magic is in how Villon uses line – it's all about process, right? How do you build a form with just a few, almost scribbled marks? Look at the woman’s dress; notice how the lines aren’t really describing the fabric so much as giving us the feeling of it, the shape of it. It’s like he’s drawing air, not just the figure itself. The texture is all in these little scratches and cross-hatchings. It is neither thick nor thin, transparent nor opaque, but alludes to these states. And the hat? That's a whole other story! A jumble of lines that somehow becomes a feathery, fancy thing. It’s like a puzzle; how does he do it? Think of Rodin, how he captured movement and emotion with rough, unfinished surfaces. Villon is doing something similar here, hinting at a world rather than spelling it all out. It’s a conversation, not a lecture, and it keeps changing every time you look at it.