In the shadow of the wing, the black creature bit
Original title: In the shadow of the wing, the black creature bit
kurzbeschreibung
Beneath a vast shadowing wing, a dark creature seizes a winged human figure and sinks its teeth in. Odilon Redon turned this uncanny, dreamlike encounter into a lithograph in 1891. The print stays entirely in grey, its forms built up from hatching and line.
Description
A broad wing-shadow spreads across the upper half of the sheet. Below it a winged figure with human features is under attack by a large dark being, of which only shadows and wing structures can be made out. Somewhere in the airy space a round hole opens. Everything remains monochrome, the greys emerging from dense hatching and strokes. Light falls from above, picking out the contours and shadows of those involved.
Context
The sheet dates from 1891, a period when Redon was turning strongly to printmaking. It belongs to a series of lithographs circling around dream, menace and the unconscious. The artist had a marked fondness for the murky and the enigmatic, which comes through clearly in his graphic work of those years.
Impact
Oppression and gloom emanate from this print, heightened by the expressive hatching and the harsh interplay of light and shadow. The attack, the threat, strikes the viewer directly and disturbs, without the image ever resolving into something definite. What lingers is unease and the sense of facing a riddle.
Technique
Redon works here in lithography, using hatching and fine strokes to draw out greys and shadows. The sheet measures 44.6 x 31.5 cm, the printed image itself 22.5 x 17.3 cm. This process reproduces the delicate web of lines and the nuanced tones with precision.
AI-generated description text
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art · Public Domain (CC0 1.0)