André Masson
There Is No Finished World
1942
Scroll
André Masson
There Is No Finished World
1942
Physical Qualities
Oil on canvas, 53 x 68 in. (134.6 x 172.7 cm.)
Credit Line
Bequest of Saidie A. May
Object Number
1951.333
This cavernous interior setting with a bloody red palette suggests a sense of somber sacrifice. Imbued with ideas of the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, There Is No Finished World portrays the precariousness of life and its cyclical regeneration. Masson identified the three Greek figures in this work as the half-man, half-goat god, Pan (left); the goddess of the harvest, Demeter (center); and the bull-headed monster, the Minotaur (right). Painted in 1942, in the midst of World War II, Masson reflected on the artist’s role in such times, “We are living in an extremetly disturbed moment of history, and it is not necessary…that the painter conceal the disquietude of his epoch.”
The Baltimore Museum of Art, by bequest, 1951; Saidie A. May, by purchase, 1942; Buchholz Gallery (Curt Valentin), New York
The Baltimore Museum of Art, "The Saidie A. May Collection of Modern paintings and Sculpture", March 17-April 16, 1950, cat. 73.
Darsie Alexander, "Robert Motherwell: Meanings of Abstraction", Baltimore Museum of Art, May 20, 2006-July 30, 2006.
Darsie Alexander, "Robert Motherwell: Meanings of Abstraction", Baltimore Museum of Art, May 20, 2006-July 30, 2006.
The Baltimore Museum of Art News, “Catalogue of the Saidie A. May Collection of Modern Paintings and Sculpture,” March, 1950, cat. 73, p. 18.
Pamela Franks,"The Tiger's Eye: The Art of a Magazine," New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, Yale University Press, n.d., pp. ?, 100, 102.
Susan Helen Adler, "Saidie May Pioneer of Early 20th Century Collecting", United States: Stonehouse Design, 2008, p. 201.
Baltimore Museum of Art. The Baltimore Museum of Art: Celebrating a Museum. Baltimore: The Baltimore Museum of Art, 2014.
Greeley, Robin Adele, Samantha Kavky, Oliver Shell, and Oliver Tostmann. "Monsters & Myths: Surrealism and War in the 1930s and 1940s." New York, NY: Rizzoli Electa in association with The Baltimore Museum of Art and Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 2018, ill.
