Imaginary entomology: the in(k)sect-blots of Gisèle Prassinos

The inkblot left its mark on the creative unconscious of twentieth-century artists and writers. Yet despite the blot’s gothic style, pareidolic tendencies, and prevalence of bestial imagery, the appearance of inkblots remains surprisingly rare in surrealist practice. “Imaginary Entomology” recovers an avant-garde history of the inkblot in Gisèle Prassinos’ unexplored short stories and drawings. Writing in 1930s Paris, she expanded the inkblot from a parlor game and psychological diagnostic to a key surrealist form of artmaking. Insects and illusory appendages persistently spilled from her inkbottle, enabling her to design spectral abstractions that challenge conventional surrealist hierarchies (predator versus prey) and authorial technique (automatism versus agency). Indeed, in her inkblots, Prassinos explores the relationship between invisible creatures and fantastic femme-enfant figures – both of which, like the inkblots themselves, remain marginal. Drawing on a large body of unpublished work held at the Historical Library of the City of Paris, this article argues that her life-long preoccupation with various blotting techniques is central to her distinctive entomological aesthetic. Prassinos’ absurdist vignettes and anti-fairy tales ultimately offer an “imaginary entomology” – to borrow her own phrasing – where avant-garde arthropods inspirit the unexpected, threatening the world of logic and the very existence of all life.