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Untitled

c. 1926

Édouard Léon Théodore Mesens

(Belgian, 1903–1971)
Culture
Belgium, 20th century
Medium
collodion silver printing-out paper, photogram
Measurements
Image: 17.9 x 23.8 cm (7 1/16 x 9 3/8 in.); Mounted: 28.2 x 35.8 cm (11 1/8 x 14 1/8 in.)
Credit Line
John L. Severance Fund 2007.95
Copyright
© 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SABAM, Brussels
This artwork is known to be under copyright.
Location
Not on view
Print

Description

Writer, composer, art dealer, and key figure in the Surrealist movement in Belgium, Mesens experimented with photograms only from 1924 to 1930. This image employs everyday objects: two leaves, one or more drinking glasses, and razor blades. The latter may be an autobiographical reference: a bit of a dandy, Mesens shaved three times a day. The seeming solidity of the objects, ranging from solid to translucent and shadowy to crisp, was altered by leaving them on the paper for varying amounts of time. His use of collodion printing-out paper, which develops slowly in sunlight without a chemical developer, suggests this may have been one of his earliest experiments with photography.

Untitled

c. 1926

Édouard Léon Théodore Mesens

(Belgian, 1903–1971)
Belgium, 20th century

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