Money’s composition is remarkable, fully two-thirds of it given over to solid black. Ironically, a year after he created this image, the artist left his own longtime mistress to marry a wealthy widow-for money. Vallotton places him literally on the dark side, merging his figure with the shadows. The lady in evening dress in Money seems unmoved by the disputation of her male companion, his intentions abstruse. Betrayal and blame are broadly assigned: in the Munch-like scene of The Triumph, a pitiless woman disdains her distraught husband in Extreme Measure, it’s the sobbing wife who’s devastated. Vallotton relied on the most reductive formal means-the simple contrast of black on white-to establish richly ambiguous scenarios, hardly clarified by suggestive titles inscribed at the bottom of each block: The Lie, The Irreparable, or Five O’Clock (that hour when French men typically met their mistresses). His brilliant graphic sense produced Intimacies, a suite of ten prints depicting couples in domestic or hotel interiors, published in 1898. From the Archives: Pierre Bonnard's Art for Art's Sake, in 1948
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