The Celestial Art
Original title: The Celestial Art
kurzbeschreibung
Odilon Redon made this lithograph, Die himmlische Kunst, in 1894. A pensive woman sits in the foreground while behind her a winged angel appears with a violin that seems to float free in the air. The print stays entirely within shades of grey, bringing together vaguely classical drapery and a mood of the otherworldly.
Description
A woman sits on a low platform in profile, her gaze turned to the left. Her robe recalls Roman dress, and her posture is collected and still. Behind her a winged angel appears playing the violin, the instrument loosening itself, as it were, from the body. The arrangement is deliberately unbalanced: the seated figure carries the main weight, while the angel behind her sets up a strange counter-note. Light falls from above, picking out the contours of both figures and the delicate gradations of the surfaces.
Context
In these years Redon was deeply engaged with symbolist subjects and with the question of how to give spiritual things a pictorial form. Angels and music stand for the idea of a heavenly, divine art, a notion widespread in the Symbolism of the late nineteenth century. Redon often turned to lithography to realise his visionary, dreamlike inventions.
Impact
Light and dark come into a balance that carries a quiet, almost devotional mood. The hovering violin and the angel lend the sheet something removed from the world, carrying the viewer into a region between waking and dream.
Technique
For this work Redon used lithography: he drew on the stone with chalk or ink and then printed from it. Fine hatching and graduated greys show his assured handling of a medium that allowed him soft transitions as well as strong contrasts of light and dark.
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Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art · Public Domain (CC0 1.0)