No
doubt inspired by his friend Pablo Picasso’s images derived from African art
and his Surrealist comrades’ fascination with sexuality and dreams, Brassaï painted
and scratched through emulsion to create a fantastical image overlaying a reclining
female nude with a leering mask. He said that using the photograph as a point
of departure for his drawing was a way of “revealing the latent figure buried
within each image.” The temptations of Saint Anthony have been a popular
subject for artists since the 15th century: the mask here symbolizes the desirous
saint, and the nude is one of the forms that Satan took to tempt him. Brassaï’s
series of altered negatives, which he later called Transmutations, was a rare foray
for an artist who generally avoided manipulating his photographs.