Currently not on view
Currently not on view
One of the battling gamecocks in Cockfight crows to communicate dominance, while the other appears defeated or dead. Just a few details are enough to express the corporeal reality of the two roosters: leaf-shaped combs, twisted geometric bodies, and spiky spurs all arranged along a whiplash line. It appears that their anatomies have already been dissected during combat.
André Masson’s deep identification with struggle and death was conditioned, in large measure, by his traumatic experience fighting and being grievously wounded as a twenty-one-year-old solider in the French army during World War I. Embarking on his artistic career in the war’s aftermath, Masson endeavored to change the austere formal innovations of modern painting by infusing them with violence, anguish, and darkness. Scenes of fighting animals evoking the Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest struggle for existence in nature are especially prominent in Masson’s work in the years leading up to Cockfight.
Currently not on view
Title: | Cockfight |
Date: | 1930 |
Artist: | André Masson (French, 1896–1987) |
Medium: | Oil on canvas |
Dimensions: | 8 9/16 × 10 5/8 inches (21.7 × 27 cm) Framed: 13 1/2 × 15 1/2 × 1 inches (34.3 × 39.4 × 2.5 cm) |
Classification: | Paintings |
Credit Line: | A. E. Gallatin Collection, 1952 |
Accession Number: | 1952-61-78 |
Geography: | Made in France, Europe |
We are always open to learning more about our collections and updating the website. Does this record contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? Contact us here.
Please note that this particular artwork might not be on view when you visit. Don’t worry—we have plenty of exhibitions for you to explore.
Currently not on view