1929

The Parallels

American (born France), 1900 - 1955

Fantastic landscapes executed with touches of extreme precision were Yves Tanguy’s perennial subject through his nearly three decades as a painter. In The Parallels, a faint horizon line divides the surface into two main zones, but the picture makes few other concessions to ordinary reality. Is this landscape terrestrial or aquatic? Soft tones and flowing textures obscure the difference. What is the nature of the entities that float through in this space? Despite their clear outlines and the illusionistic light-dark modeling and cast shadows that give them convincing tangibility, they have a disorienting, amorphous simplicity. The Parallels seems to be a hazy limbo of distant, primordial life.