The Birth of Tragedy
Paalen understood his "picture beings" as a kind of pictorial version of the ancient "choros tragicos", the tragic chorus effect, conceived in Nietzsche's writing on "The Birth of Tragedy." It is the deep existential foundation of reality, what he is interested in. Although it becomes common practice after 1947, until this time, nobody had placed so much responsibility on the viewer as Paalen did with his rhetoric and pictorial language.