Old Musician 1949

Seymour Tubis made this etching, Old Musician, and like many prints, it is all about the process, the evidence of working. The blacks and grays feel velvety because of the way the ink sits on the paper, not quite flat, but raised and soft. Look at the musician's face, all hard angles, the planes of the face formed by the hatching of the lines. It’s a mask of angles, a Cubist face, but he is still there, behind the instrument, in shadow. It is interesting to see a printmaker playing with perspective and form like this, usually you associate it with paint and canvas. I’m reminded of Picasso’s etching and drypoints from the ‘30s, where he flattens and fractures the image, turning it into a series of lines. You can see how artists play with images across time, taking apart and rebuilding our ideas of representation. Nothing is fixed.