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Anatomy of My Universe
Artist: André Masson (French, 1896-1987)
Publisher: Curt Valentin, New York, 1943
Printer: Golden Eagle Press, Mount Vernon, NY (S. A. Jacobs)
Author: André Masson (French, 1896-1987)
Date: 1943
Dimensions:
Book: 13 x 9 7/8 in. (330 x 251mm)
Page: 12 1/2 x 9 1/2 in. (318 x 241mm)
Sheet: 10 1/8 x 8 1/8 in. (25.7 x 20.6 cm);
Image: 7 13/16 x 5 15/16 in. (19.7 x 15 cm)
Medium: Original print: 1 etching
Reproduction: line block reproductions of pen and ink drawings
Text: letterpress
Paper: white wove paper
Classification: Books
Credit Line: Museum Purchase
Object number: 1979.95A-B
Label Text:Following the fall of France, André Masson fled to the United States in 1941. In the face of worries about the fate of Europe, he turned to nature: "I began to work in the way I ambitiously call chthonic, belonging to subterranean forces … I didn't abandon Surrealism but I gave it a new meaning." In this 1942 soft-ground etching, he incorporated the imprints of leaves and fabrics, cryptic symbols, partly-effaced writing, a labyrinthine form, and a humanoid figure - mysterious signs of nature, myth, and human consciousness.
This book reproduces Masson's drawings inspired by his ideas adopted from occultism, alchemy, astrology, Neo-Platonism, the Cabala, Scholasticism, etc. In the prologue, Mason states:"this graphic world is a universe that I create.... Whence come these imaged forms? They come from my impassioned meditation, an attitude that poses an object, even in its first movement when it seems to be completely sunk in the undetermined. But soon, as in the process of dream-induced hallucination,...there appear forms already plastic like dreams and this meditative disposition calls up forgotten sensations, burned dreams. It is their polymorphous play that I orchestrate in their becoming.
This book reproduces Masson's drawings inspired by his ideas adopted from occultism, alchemy, astrology, Neo-Platonism, the Cabala, Scholasticism, etc. In the prologue, Mason states:"this graphic world is a universe that I create.... Whence come these imaged forms? They come from my impassioned meditation, an attitude that poses an object, even in its first movement when it seems to be completely sunk in the undetermined. But soon, as in the process of dream-induced hallucination,...there appear forms already plastic like dreams and this meditative disposition calls up forgotten sensations, burned dreams. It is their polymorphous play that I orchestrate in their becoming.
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