Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art

About this Work

As a surrealist, André Masson preferred a wild, "Dionysiac" view of classicism to a rational, noble "Apollonian" approach. Said to have favored "Greek myths of the darkest kind," his tastes ran to stories that combined elements of violence, passion, abduction, and chaos. The eroticism of all-female societies such as the Hesperides', particularly appealed to him. The Hesperides, "nymphs of the setting sun" who guarded the garden of the gods and the golden apples of Hera on a remote island, inspired this print. Rather than a literal interpretation of their myth, Masson's print is a free association from it, with dreamlike elements suggesting a nude female torso in the center.