Money
Much can be hidden in an image that is mostly black. This invites to a use of imagination.
The artist Felix Vallotton has been introduced (at least to some degree) in an earlier post here on Naive Notions, but more of his woodcuts deserve attention. The print below is an image from 1898. The picture is one (No. 5, to be exact) out of ten in the series Intimacies, a series of woodcuts displaying casual scenes from the Paris bourgeoisie.
In the picture, a man in black, surrounded by shadows, is addressing a woman, standing by the window, in a pure white dress. There are curtains adorning the window and bricks on the wall outside of it. The window appears to be open, as the woman stretches her arm through it to the outside. Not much more is visible in the picture, although the empty space might be hiding something.
I find the composition highly intriguing. The vastness of the darkness in the picture is unsettling; most of what is going on seems to be hidden from us. Metaphorically, I think the male figure is carrying something dark, something overwhelming, that inevitably spreads around him. By the gesture the man makes with his hands, he seems to be trying to explain something to the woman, and as the title indicates, it might have to do with money. He might be convincing the woman to invest, or he might be eager to justify the money he has already spent but is concealing the reason for his ardent behaviour.
She, on the other hand, is looking out of the window, thoughtful, and not willing to look at him while he speaks. She may have a bad feeling about his suggestions, noticing the darkness creeping up on her. Her pure white dress might indicate her innocence and perhaps a certain nativity. «Is what he is saying correct?», she might think. «What should I do?» I can almost see her pulse rate rising.
It really looks like the darkness in the picture is swelling, like a big black hole that is inflating. On the outer edge of this black hole is the man, consuming everything around him. If she does not get herself into safety, it seems she will be swallowed by the ever-expanding darkness. And as she is pushed towards the window, she may need to enter the darkness in order to get free. Or risk jumping out of the open window and into the light.
Many of Vallotton’s prints in his Intimacies series have a significant amount of darkness in them. This print, however, Money, is the one that most severely uses the darkness as a part of the composition and which most obviously invites us to use our imagination to figure out what this darkness is all about.