Three Moderately Cautionary Tales by Alexander Massouras
or Fifty Etchings on Relief
The whole book can be viewed HERE
Three Moderately Cautionary Tales is a series of fifty hard-ground etchings in three cycles. Each cycle follows a loose narrative arc which leads to an anticlimactic epiphany. The whimsical etchings draw their imagery from a wide range of sources—the photography of Eadweard Muybridge, the fiction of Jorge Luis Borges, magazine images, pictures from Ebay, Old Master paintings, Wittgenstein, and the artist’s family photographs. Their melancholy tone borrows from Edward Gorey; their nonsense from Kurt Schwitters and Edward Lear.
The Gilderbook narrates the protagonist’s unrelenting pursuit of beauty. The etchings trace his obsession with gilding and its effect on his world. The progressive incorporation of gold leaf in the etchings formally mirrors the encroachment that they narrate: the narrative bleeds into the form. Hieronymus the Lion Tamer is about the hope of transformation. The hero’s escape from a vocational malaise is a tale of redemption through the surrender of a talent. Alfred’s Library describes an over-zealous pursuit of knowledge which turns out to be fragile; Alfred’s solace is found in rest
The whole book can be viewed HERE
