Contemporary Engravings
Engraving Love and Death, Cupid, the child god of love, instead of shooting arrows, holds a brush and draws death. Death in turn draws the child
KM011487
Annette Messager takes inspiration from the humble, mundane, and domestic daily life of women, but also popular art and outsider art. Psychoanalysis and childhood are also areas that provided inspiration. With Love and Death, she provides a moving diptych bringing love, life and art into dialogue.
This acrylic wash is gracious and elegant, showing dark humour, and staging Eros and Thanatos
face to face in a cruel, unequal game. It depicts Cupid, painting death through a play on mirrors, death in turn paints the child, god of love.
Her sensitive interpretation works on evoking ancient mythology, which is so present in the Louvre, all while resorting to a seeming simplicity of tools, with an aesthetic reminiscent of that of ink spots, where subtle forms are revealed where we look to read the reflection of our thoughts and emotions.
The artist and intaglio printmaker of the Rmn-Grand Palais printing studio in Saint Denis discussed the choice of inks and papers as well as the printing technique: photogravure.
