"Parsifal / Druidess": Unfolding a Lithographic Metamorphosis by

Transcription

"Parsifal / Druidess": Unfolding a Lithographic Metamorphosis by Odilon Redon
Author(s): Dario Gamboni
Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 89, No. 4 (Dec., 2007), pp. 766-796
Published by: College Art Association
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a
Parsifal / Druidess: Unfolding
Lithographic
by Odilon Redon
Metamorphosis
Dario
Gamboni
In 1879, with an album of ten prints and one frontispiece
en tided Dans le r?ve ("In theDream" or "Dreaming"), Odilon
Redon started publishing lithographs. The album format
proved
and
congenial
three more
successful:
followed
a clear distinction
He made
between
the
Jules Destr?e.
isolated
he
introduced
under
which
the
title
plates,
generic
as "not
Pi?ces
modernes
but
linked
by any
regarded
special
"in the author's
the albums,
and
which,
mind,
relationship,"
form wholes,
that cannot
be broken
down without
groupings
num
his
Pieces"
betraying
By then, these "Modern
thought."1
to
bered
Redon
continued
al
eight
lithographs.
produce
critic
as
bums,
books.
In fact, his
for
prints
and
preparing
of his
catalog
to
so that in 1898, while
rest mainly on his albums, so much
a new
for
journals
frontispieces
as a
continued
lithographer
reputation
the
prints,
critic Andr?
Mel
lerio asked him why he had produced isolated pieces. Redon
replied somewhat angrily that he had made them like "every
other
artist
tion
echoes
from
signaled
and
vidual
the present
the
that
the
Mellerio's
ques
past."2
character
of the albums,
the
sequential
contrasts
by Redon
organized
were
within
prints
and
between
to his
crucial
them,
the
indi
appreciation.
Despite Redon's irritation, the insight provided by such an
approach remains valuable. The 1885 album Homage toGoya,
for
instance,
series
and
opens
are
and
clearly
tary: the firstone
a dark
on
front
closes
with
conceived
as
two
that frame
images
and
opposed
the
complemen
(Fig. 20) shows a male head, seen from the
a melancholic
with
background,
and
search
ing expression, while a female profile (Fig. 21), described by
as
the
caption
sheet
white
We
"severe
in the
October
1891,
the
organized
which
itself
are
prints
the writer
champion,
with a note
answered
mutually
received
of
Goya
mail
thanks
that,
ures
strange
confronted
unfolded,
created.
you
and
Ah!
gentle
me
But
and
they
are
suffering
and
with
his
had
from
written
perfect
with
who
Huysmans,
to
On
unrelated.
day: "My janitor brought me up thismorning
once
prints,
according
the
sentence
to Mellerio's
clearly
of which
and
minute
in 1976,
way when,
unexpected
a pretty roll
the
troubling
fig
so
the one
Redons,
the other
arrow,
so
catalog,
were
have
been
proofs
version
this unknown
three
only
of
comparison
led
to conclude
them
must
considers
them
as
a
pair
on
a
A
preserved.6
I will
(which
subject."
They
must
have
been
an undescribed
not
state
of
"printed from a different stone and
a first,
be
therefore
itwas
that
the latter but had been
supposed
a flaw
in the
of
version
rejected
that the
reason
for
Parsifal
rejection
a hori
created
"which
stone,
the
this
zontal black line through the entire composition, just above
Parsifal's brow," and they argued for the equal quality but
and
of
emotional
"conception
impact"
a harsh,
accents
forms
broken
light
divergent
versions:
seems
he
fate,"
merely
the hero appear
"pensive"
nation of Parsifal II
Extending the comparison
the
even
same
period,
more
recur
can
be
easily
elements
seen
illumi
lithographs of
a
made
Swenson
that
discovery:
as
in Druidess,
one
when
second,
observed
that
the
fortuitous
"apparently
I
of Parsifal
of
two
the
and
is turned upside down (Fig. 4). McCullagh
compositions
Swenson
to other Redon
and
McCullagh
remarkable
"tormented by
soft, even
in the
two
the
dramat
whereas
ically in Parsifal I and makes
his
assemblage
of lines on Parsifal's white collar is found inverted on the
Druidess's
white
reconstruction
headband."
of
the
They
proposed
one
from
passage
of Parsifal's
neck
and
chin,
her
and
the
side
her
veil,
elegant
at
the bottom
of his
helmet
added
of
edge
lithograph
shaft of
of
"remnants
the
the
They
earring."
of Druidess,
that
Parsifal's
from the lighted
him
light beside
is transformed
in some
right
the print,"
following
to the
eye
which
impres
can be
cor
now
responds to the horizontal black line observed inParsifal! In
other words, they suggested that after rejecting Parsifal I,
Redon
turned
the
stone
upside
down
and,
leaving
out
the
smaller part of the lithograph divided by the aberrant line,
transformed
the
larger
initial
to his
returning
new version
of
is a
This
editioned
Suzanne
henceforward call Parsifal I) with the impressions ofMellerio
116 (henceforward Parsifal IT) in the Art Institute collection
discerned
same
Given the fact thatHuysmans received the three lithographs
in one roll, it is only logical that he should have discussed
them together, but his treatment of Parsifal and Druidess in
same
in an
confirmed
sions
artist,
build
Folds McCullagh and Inge Christine Swenson, two art histo
rians working at the Art Institute of Chicago, discovered a
version o? Parsifal (Fig. 3) unmentioned inMellerio's catalog,
into
become
the
on
had
in 1892: Parsifal (Fig. 1), Druidess (Fig. 2), and a linear depic
tion of two standing women entitled Mystical Conversation?
the
counterpart
defines
terriblyanimal with her crude profile and her shiny eye. And
the two pale mystics!"4 This description identifies three
which,
of the former
level, the gentleness
to the hardness
of the latter.
This intuition of an intimate link between the two images
area
contention
Destr?e's
Joris-Karl
of Homage
promotion
semantic
other: "The priestess's profile is developed
with
disagree
critical
he
detaches
hard,"
the
one.3
also
individual
11,
Redon's
second
however,
may,
that Redon's
and
from
ing
and
a
was
until,
in 1886, the artist began issuing individual sheets with Profile
ofLight (Fig. 18). In April 1891, a first catalog of Redon's
lithographs was published by the Belgian lawyer,writer, and
as well
formal
it, Parsifal
strange
expected
genesis
canceled
routinely
not
/was
see,
sufficient
image, Druidess,
an
and
creating
composition
a
new
on
stone.
II,
and
before
entirely
hardly
corresponding
a work.
stones
Lithographic
run was
a
after
regrained
print
procedure,
from
pleted, so thematerial
Redon
into a new
part
such
to the
were
com
loss represented by the failed Parsifal
to call
for a
of
"recycling"
this kind. Was
reluctant to lose the image completely? As we shall
it would
have
been
easy
to transfer
the
imperfect
image
A LITHOGRAPHIC
UNFOLDING
BY ODILON
METAMORPHOSIS
REDON
757
1 Odilon Redon, Parsifal [II], 1891,
on mounted
ivory China
lithograph
12M> X 95/s in. (32.1 X
paper,
of
24.3 cm). The Art Institute
the Stickney
Collection,
Chicago,
1920.1695 (artwork in the public
domain; photograph provided by the
Art
Institute
onto
of Chicago)
a new
/is Parsifal
improve
into
the
II, which
on
takes
it. The
other,
have
therefore
instances
image
from
another,"
of a nude
I
of Parsifal
must
of Druidess
transformation
image
in its own
Redon
right.
In their brief
and Swenson
rightly pointed
in which
"created
including
an early etching of a galloping
evocation
of Parsifal
to
version
of the rejected
different
radically
attracted
outcome
obvious
advantage
additional
article, McCullagh
documented
the more
and
stone,
Redon
one
a
in which
to other
new
wholly
he
turned
rider (Fig. 5) into the vague
the mean
woman
(Fig. 6), transforming
into a depiction
lines of clouds
of hair after
turning
dering
on
cases
as "indicative
saw such
of
its side. They
the
plate
to see alternatives
in his creations
and of his
Redon's
ability
one
to pursue
form from
these visions,
nurturing
willingness
can go even further and
in this
One
another."
ability
identify
a
and
of Redon's
and willingness
theory
key element
practice
we
of meta
look at this process
take a closer
of art. Before
morphosis,
though,
we must
ask
ourselves
to what
extent
the
identity of the two figures at stake, following the indications
by Redon's
given
titles,
are
relation
in the genetic
involved
binding them.
Parsifals
refers
Parsifal
ard Wagner's
in
sented
er's
read
and
which
was
iar to him
the
Le
of chivalry
had
Redon
had
been
many
important
that he had
would
write
of his
brothers
he was
de Troyes's
ou le roman
conte du Graal
reasons
himself
played
a fine
to be
to him
been
piano
violinist.
his
"born
on
wrote
More
pre
the compos
it, he
knew
could
of
de Perceval.
attracted
from
and
been
its plot,
famil
have been
already
tale
late-twelfth-century
he
case,
and may
discussed
widely
from Chr?tien
had
preceding
seen
not
had
in any
and
of Rich
hero
work
the year
Redon
although
libretto,
This
drama.
in 1882,
Bayreuth
death,
have
to the eponymous
unequivocally
last musical
to
Wagner.
Music
and
years,
early
a sound wave."7
music
criticism,
important,
he
had
he
One
and
de
ART BULLETIN
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LXXXIX
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NUMBER
2 Redon,
1891,
Druidess,
on mounted
ivory China
lithograph
9Vs X
paper,
8 in. (23.1 X 20.2 cm). The Art
Institute
Collection,
of Chicago,
1920.1698
the Stickney
(artwork
in the
public domain; photograph provided
by theArt Instituteof Chicago)
himself
fined
on
early
as
a
"symphonist
and
painter,"
musical
were
devotees
of
model
he
on the
thought that the future of the visual arts depended
Many Wagner
"suggestion."8
to him,
Ernest
Chausson
the composer
and
close
including
to
The
latter was
Henri
Fantin-Latour.
using
lithography
after Wagner,
disseminate
Parsifal
compositions
including
and theFlowerMaidens
(Fig. 12), and introduced Redon
Redon,
technique.
to
with
interpret
colors
however,
the
as
himself
Wagner
casions,
however,
admiration
an
In
nature."9
for
he
also
Wagner's
unfulfilled?to
he
note,
unpublished
"yet another
even
On
naturalist."10
world,
his
expressed
as well
work,
interest
as his
dismissed
even
and
his
desire?which
visit Bayreuth.
were
the
in Paris, Wagnerites
the
mid-1880s
advocating
By
other
of the "total work of art." Like
early proponents
theory
would
remain
of Symbolism, they participated
heart,
that of freeing
The Revue
naturalism.
the visual
on
the
Salon
from
of
that
de Wyzewa
year
the
founded
Wagn?riennewas
and on May 8, 1886, Teodor
pages
in an effortdear to Redon's
arts
by
constraints
in June
calling
for
a
of
1885,
commented
descriptive"
existing
ciated
ing
in its
peinture
and
the
editor
to
musical,"
He
painting.11
practitioners
himself
officially
Redon,
its
among
indeed,
who,
"sensational
replace
mentioned
had
already
already
asso
cause
the Wagnerian
by accept
an
to create
invitation
Dujardin's
with
Edouard
(Fig. 7) as a deluxe gift for subscribers
image of Br?nnhilde
to the Revue}2 The head of this Br?nnhilde bears a definite
to the
later Druidess
(Fig.
2).
also
Redon
exhib
ited Br?nnhilde drawings in 1888 and 1890, and he would
publish in 1894 a second lithograph with the same title, less
more
and
dramatic
oc
several
and
resemblance
attempt
the musical
"solely internal and without any support in
which he deemed
real
of Fantin's
disapproved
of
painting
to this
"emotional
wagn?rienne,
in character.13
Pre-Raphaelite
Devoting a lithograph to the figure of Parsifal in 1891 was
therefore
place
tation
a
not
in a
series
of myths
and
Wagnerism
Symbolism,
of
the center
then
ing by
publicity may
relevance
more
on Redon's
It took
choice
part.
surprising
to
of explicit
references
interpre
Wagner's
association
with
and
reinforced
the artist's
that
of
syncratic
and
public
raise a doubt
should
as Redon
rejection
two cultural
be
traditional
at
times
about
for his
notions
desultory
The
love
of
occupy
of
dimension
the degree
to this choice
granted
is known
movements
attention.
of
of intrinsic
title, all
the
his
of
indeterminacy,
and his
"illustration,"
treatment
of
idio
iconography.14
A LITHOGRAPHIC
UNFOLDING
BY ODILON
METAMORPHOSIS
769
REDON
3 Redon, Parsifal [I], 1891, lithograph
on mounted
ivory China
12%
paper,
X 9V2 in. (32.2 X 24 cm). The Art
Institute
of Chicago,
Gift
of Robert
M.
Light, 1975.493 (artwork in the public
domain; photograph provided by the
Art
Institute
The
Mus?e
thus
of Chicago)
d'Orsay,
to have
seems
owns
Paris,
presented
a
that Redon
drawing
as
and Saint
Parsifal
pastel
alternately
John (Fig. 8).15 Bearded, without helmet and spear but with a
and
coat,
heavy
amid
standing
a mountainous
landscape,
this
figure has little in common with Parsifal I and Parsifal II,
except
meanor.
for
perhaps
Still,
John"
Parsifal
the
is
revealing
could
be
oversize
the
hesitation
placed
eyes
between
of
both
and
the
for Redon
"Parsifal"
semantic
and
of
de
melancholic
and
context
the artist's
"Saint
rous
drawing
and mystical,
The
"a kind
seen
of Parsifal,
from
the
bard
or
or
during
and oriented
I
after
its realization
barba
it. However,
even
"a kind
than
have
of Parsifal"
labeled ex post facto has something to do with its literaryand
play"
de Troyes
the German
tury by
ourselves
ask
interest
could
in
Wagner's
libretto was
what
Redon.
The
worth
already
adapted
poet Wolfram
that
noting
in
cen
in the
thirteenth
early
von Aeschenbach.
and
the
1860s?when
It
fascinated
early
stage
which
Wagner
literature,
by epic
of mankind
and
with
he
associated
the unadulterated
is
was
writing the first sketch for his Parsifal poem?Redon
an
knight,
rather
Chr?tien
manner
front."17
festival
inspired by the legend of the Holy Grail, as transmitted by
been
titleParsifal may thus have come to identify the figure
of Parsifal
preceded
as
so we must
referent,
"sacred
in which
of identifyingwhat he liked to call his "fictions."16 In May
list of works an
1904, he described in his chronological
earlier
musical
had
with
land
scape and people of his beloved Pays Basque.18 His firstmajor
painting, shown at the 1870 exhibition of the Soci?t? des
Amis
des
century
Arts
de
chanson
was
Bordeaux,
de
geste
hero
alone,
youthful
separated
mass
his red cape
of a mountain,
perhaps
Parsifal,
on
based
de Roland:
Chanson
from
his
forming
troop
a halo
the
the
depicts
the
dark
by
and
to his imminent sacrifice (Fig. 9).
the
son
of a
knight
killed
in combat,
eleventh
it
was
alluding
raised
in
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ignorance of his origin and of knighthood by his mother
have
feared
who
Herzeleide,
for
to Redon
appealed
his
element
life?an
in connection
that may
the
with
complex
history of his own childhood.19 Following knights who pass
Parsifal
the woods,
through
reaches
the castle
Montsalvat,
of
theHoly Grail, and witnesses the drama unfolding within its
walls
without
a
it. Klingsor,
understanding
ma
self-castrated
gician rejected by the chaste Knights of the Grail, uses the
Flower
and
Maidens
the
seductress
to ensnare
Kundry
them;
he has managed to take the Holy Spear from King Amfortas
while the latter succumbed toKundry and to inflicton him a
wound thatwill not heal, making him unfit to perform the
holy office of theGrail. Attempting to regain theHoly Spear,
Parsifal resists the maiden but is tempted by Kundry into a
kiss.
Instead
ture
of being
of Amfortas's
seduced,
wound,
the
recovering
Klingsor,
he
however,
the na
realizes
and
Kundry,
vanquishes
side.
Christ's
that had pierced
rejects
spear
Cursed by Kundry, he does not reach Montsalvat again until
a
after
the
on
long wandering,
repentant
Good
heals
Kundry,
and
Amfortas,
he
There,
Friday.
baptizes
becomes
of
King
the Grail.20
and
purity
have
chastity
the miracle,
performed
but not without the brief moment of weakness echoing the
prophecy once heard by Amfortas: "Enlightened through
the
compassion,
Tor].99 Wagner
innocent
for
adopted
[Durch Mitleid
fool
his
wissend,
name
hero's
der reine
an
assume
Parsifal
at
the
end
imaginary
of
the artist who
the
role
of Christ,
becomes
of
capable
with
man
redeeming
of
and
isolation
image
many
can
male
figures,
their
making
this
texts,
private
under
the guise
Expressed
in his works
inadequacy.23
be detected
also
in
to
resemblances
of
I
Parsifal
and Parsifal II significant. The Cask ofAmontillado (Fig. 10), for
refers to the character
example,
short story but on a more
Poe's
as a victim.24
tilted
The
figure's
eyes,
closed
found?amid
lesser
and
lips,
obvious
extent,
in Edgar
Allan
the fool
shows
of Fortunato
generic
head,
melancholic
level
hard
can
expression
in Parsifal
II Apart
to
I
differences?in
and,
Parsifal
from more
features,
regular
which bring it closer to Parsifal II, the same can be said of
Head Crowned with Thorns (Fig. 11), a Christ-like representa
tion
of a "gentle"
martyr,
in which
the dark
eyes
are
empha
sized even more by the light filling the lower part of the face
and
A
with
contemporary
comparison
is also
artists
fal by other
illuminating.
representations
Under
the
of Parsi
terms
of a
copyright obtained from King Ludwig II for Parsifal, written
forWagner's newly built theater, Parsifal could not be per
formed outside Bayreuth from its creation in 1882 to 1914.
Nonetheless?or
perhaps
because
of the restriction?images
of it proliferated, generally based on Paul von Joukowsky's
original sets and costumes.25 Joukowsky and most of his
followers distinguished between the Parsifal of the first act, a
more
or
less
rustic
simpleton
Christ-like Parsifal who appeared
in peasant's
attire,
and
the
after Kundry's kiss and the
a
gave
Rochegrosse
protocinematographic
vaguely architectural forms in the first version
secondary
and
figures,
and
the
spear.
a minimum
only
the
Significantly,
(Fig. 3)?no
of attributes:
closest
helmet,
antecedents
of
his Parsifal in compositional terms are icons of Saint George
in the Byzantine tradition, where the closely framed saint
a
holds
As
that also
spear
to the
remains
reason
the question
a
to
inspire
in this direction:
points
as
tends
Parsifal
virgins,
case
another
terminacy;
an
like
looks
transformation
arrow.
of Redon's
Parsifal
of whether
Wagner's
of
change
Iinto
gendered
Druidess,
Parsifal
had
identity.
My
knight with Joan ofArc already
like other
to a
characters
young
certain
sexual
is Saint
in point
seen Redon
defined
lability
whom
John,
or
inde
we
have
equate with Parsifal. In addition, it isby rejecting
that
Parsifal transforms his initial "foolishness" into
sexuality
full-grown,
spiritual
purity.
Among
contem
of Parsifal
images
porary with Redon's lithograph, the most interesting in this
context is a slightly later drawing by Simeon Solomon in
scribed A Design for a Motif from Parsifal (Fig. 14). It depicts
twoheads in profile, the one on the left looking upward and
Their
the
as
for
almost
headdress
their
a veil
with
are
features
one's
second
appearance;
is covered
which
one,
wing,
identically
androgynous
lends
it a more
feminine
to
relation
a bird's
and
one
drama,
Wagner's
is
tempted to interpret them as Parsifal and Kundry, but they
as well
could
same
sen
represent
since
person,
by
Solomon
developments
but also more
the woodcut
bust.
amia
into women,
and Parsifal
stand
turning
of
Arc.
These
them
like a male
Joan
Redon
chose
how
the iconic
comparisons
emphasize
clearly
over
as he had done
in The Cask
Amontillado.
the narrative,
of
no
His
of Parsifal
show no action,
images
setting?except
but
a
as an
him
shown
the flowers
porn?of
transfixed
amid
ing
the other
be
all
had
rendering of the same scene (Fig. 13), with a literal evoca
to mind Disney animation spiked with soft
tion?calling
downward.
oversize
features,
himself
comparison of Rochegrosse's
the world.22 This combination of traits
to
the image of the artist thatRedon had
corresponds closely
in
built for himself,
part to justify and sublimate his feelings
kind by renouncing
Fantin-Latour
Georges-Antoine
any
and he understood him as a
Kundry playing Mary Magdalen,
figure
torments.
ble semigod, gently making his way through the crowd of
entreating maidens
(Fig. 12). The late academic painter
there
etymology proposed by Johann Joseph von G?rres: a deriva
tion from theArabic parsi (pure, chaste) and/?/ (fool).21 He
had
erotic temptations encountered by the hero than by his inner
cape,
Parsifal's
also
over
to the sec
is closer
Redon's
Parsifal
triumph
Klingsor.
as the presence
ond
of
the
but his
confirms,
spear
type,
or melancholic
in
I,
suffering
Parsifal
expression,
particularly
an
a
indicates
The
rather
than
quest.
ongoing
completed
in what
and
artists who
called
"sensational
Wyzewa
indulged
on the
were more
attracted
art,"
contrary,
by the
descriptive
the
two
aspects
sparse
and
ambiguous
Richard
feminized
artist?to
of
readings.26
the
cho
attributes
Later
in the twentieth century yield more explicit
idiosyncratic expressions of this tendency: in
as a Woman,
Wagner
Baselitz not only depicted Wagner's
also
two moments
for both
arguments
give
or
the
neutralize
in
composer,
his
love
of
for example,
Georg
head upside down but
to
order?according
the
pathos.27
The later interpretation most relevant to Redon by far is
Hans J?rgen Syberberg's 1982 film Parsifal, inwhich the hero
a man
is played
by
same
in the
year,
and
the
two
egg.
Then
the
In a "film
a woman.
director
calls
them
essay"
published
I" and
"Parsifal
"Parsifal II" and explains their relationship as follows. During
the
overture,
together
in an
briefly
appear
Parsifal
united,
I stands
up
as
and
if
sleeping
"enters
the
film" while Parsifal II continues to sleep, intimating that the
A LITHOGRAPHIC
UNFOLDING
BY ODILON
METAMORPHOSIS
REDON
771
4 Redon, Parsifal [I] presented upside
down
in the public
(artwork
domain;
photograph provided by theArt
Institute
of Chicago)
action
is her
following
ture as "our dream."28
dream
while
The
male
I lives his
Parsifal
adven
which
remark
Parsifal?looking
lemical
ably like Redon's Parsifal I at this point?is
replaced by the
female one (Fig. 15) when Kundry's kiss reminds him of
Amfortas's
wound,
which
of
fusion
cinematographic
(Karen Krick) with themale
an
produces
which
for
ment
show
of
temptation
in an inner
herself. The
practical,
going
rather
than
Kundry's
gender doubling
solution
the biblical
himself.
The
and
body
face
actor's
to "the
visual-aural
had
the
explained
actor
female
of Kundry
as man's
monologue,
visible
beyond
double
Syberberg
actor
by the
rejection
within
that
enabled
as mankind's
resistance
"better
the
resistance
to woman?as
part"
was
of Parsifal thus presented
difficult
conception
intellectual
of woman
her
to
if,
warning
a
task" of
as
evil,
who
sung
"a
to
and
cultural,
po
reportedly
by Wilhelmine
on
improvement
also
Syberberg
tenors
disliked
and
updating
that the
thought
and once
Schr?der-Devrient,
praised
would
have
a
of his
Parsifal."31
image
androgynous
are further
reasons
to support
In
this assertion.
good
on
that after
noted
27, 1880,
June
diary, Cosima
Wagner
enjoyed
There
replace
to
him
intended
Weltanschauung,
Wagner's
Romeo
"image,"
of "a chi
effect
to this
In addition
of
for historical,
attached
reasons.30
composer,
singer's voice (Reiner Goldberg)
spectators-auditors
the male
Parsifal's
feels
the female
unforgettable
some
a monster."29
mera,
now
he
was
Wagner
female
playing the first theme from Parsifal on the piano, Wagner
explained to her that he had had certain words sung by a
so
choir
that
line. He
they would
further
sound
neither
this device
compared
nor mascu
feminine
to Leonardo's
depic
tion of Christ in his Last Supper (Fig. 16), which amounted
"an
almost
portray
woman."32
feminine
"the
human
It
is worth
head
a beard"
with
features
noting
in
here
and
was
meant
man
neither
general,
was
that Redon
a
to
to
nor
great
ART
772
DECEMBER
BULLETIN
2007 VOLUME
LXXXIX
NUMBER
4
on
5 Redon,
1866, etching
light gray
Galloping Horseman,
to ivory wove
chine affixed
214 X 5V4 in. (6.3 X
paper,
the Stickney Collection,
13.3 cm). The Art Institute of Chicago,
1920.1523
in the
public
(artwork
domain;
photograph
provided by theArt Institute of Chicago)
of Leonardo
admirer
that
and
to the
resemblance
latter's
his
Christ,
Parsifal
although
turning
point
made
career,
popular
numerous
treatments
"androgynous"
a
by
litho
have noted in Parsi
graphed version (Fig. 17). Musicologists
fal
one
explicit
d'Orsay, Paris), a
than the painting Closed Eyes (1890, Mus?e
in the artist's
a definite
bears
a less
of
timbre,
rhythm,
and voice, including the triple choir of the Grail ceremony
(act 2, scene 2) in which the progressive spiritualization is
expressed not only by a higher position in the cupola but also
a desexualization
by
young
of
These
boys.33
of
"all
the
that
of
form
sexual
and
racial
of the
"religion
aimed at the
by Parsifal and by Wagner
future" preached
abolition
to the
the knights
the Canadian
musicol
from
led
have
to consider
Nattiez
ogist Jean-Jacques
voices
the
features
distinction."34
Druidesses
to a rich and
referred
topical
clearly
or inde
the issue of sexual
ambiguity
al
the case with Druidess,
is less obviously
thus
Parsifal
that included
Redon's
context
This
terminacy.
though the latter subject is far from isolated in the artist's
work. A charcoal drawing with this title (Kr?ller-M?ller Mu
seum,
side
and
trees
oak
in
an
Redon
expression
Druidess
also
nature.36
two
particular,
of the
its
takes
form
incarnations
be
standing
of the same
of the Druidic
the connection
being.35 Beyond
forests
female
schematic
if they were
as
tree,
a
shows
Otterlo)
a
Druidesses
between
affinity
place
in the
cult with
for
represented
women
long
and
of his
series
female profiles, one of which, entitled The Fairy (1882, col
of Mrs.
lection
Bertram
as
served
Smith),
a model
for
the
1886 lithograph Profile of Light (Fig. 18).37 It shares with
Druidess
elaborate
the
as well
veils,
flowing
in one
forehead
is different,
"primitive"
her as "so
line. The
and
the
Druidess
harsh
of
and
shape
with
nose
profile
their gazes,
displays
heavier
with
can
be
more
to describe
Huysmans
some
To
crude
profile."
to that between
the
compared
her
1885 and the 1894 versions of Br?nnhilde (Fig. 7). An
entitled
charcoal
motif
As
seems
with
drawing
the Druidess's
for
the reference
to owe
it to a
Spring
association
to a Druidic
comparison
connects
with
priestess
made
the female
trees
and
1883
profile
nature.38
in a title, Redon
in passing
domain;
1920.1524
Collection,
photograph
by
provided
in the
(artwork
the Art Institute of
Chicago)
the
however,
and
the Stickney
Chicago,
public
on
wove
and drypoint
1904, etching
ivory
in. (13.3 X 6.3 cm). The Art Institute of
Bather,
5lA X 2??
and
prompted
animal
terribly
their difference
extent,
relatively
direction
which
features,
in conical
headdress
as a
6 Redon,
paper,
by
the
Belgian
lawyer,
art critic,
and
collector
Edmond
in his
Picard
"monodrama" Le jure (The Juror). In 1886, Picard had asked
meant
to be
six drawings
this text with
interpret
as
the
chosen
passages
Among
"reproduced"
lithographs.39
was
of the hero's
of a photograph
the description
by Redon
in which
and grandi
distant mother
she appeared
"dramatic
the artist
to
ose, with the hairdo
[or the headgear]
theatrical,
filled
imposing,
with
her
of a Druidic priestess,
factitious,
luxurious
and
loud life,but with nothing motherly about her."40 In typical
fashion,
Redon?who
had
reasons
to
complain
about
his own
A LITHOGRAPHIC
UNFOLDING
7 Redon,
4%
paper,
Brunnhilde,
X 3% in.
main;
8,
(August
Collection,
photograph
socialite
into
8 Redon,
1914 in.
in the public
do
(artwork
the Art Institute of Chicago)
1920.1606
by
provided
mother?transformed
distant
this
Picard,
enigmatic
profile.41
the following
have noticed
and
year, must
bought
Spring
this
since
he
modified
transformation,
accepted
accordingly
the simplified quotation
for the
caption
lithograph,
from a fashionable
detail
from his text that he offered as a
extending
to the whole
the
Pays Basque,
1860s
on, were
widely
had been
early origins
where
Redon
regarded
least diluted
to have
suffered,
historical
conquerors,
logic, and
communion
nirs
eternal
fairy-tale
areas
"the
from
where
by subsequent
the
these
history."43
where
he
and
its soil was
seemed
to him
"to have
lived,
"like
an
to have
force,
Ernest Renan
child,
with
loved,"
he
the Celts
nature,
et de
jeunesse,
the
represented
and
the unconscious.
which
Redon
irrational,
read
fantasy,
In his Souve
and
annotated,
told in 1883 of the legends he had heard as a
and
he
contrasted
the Greeks'
achievements,
with
X
2bVi
paper,
des
D?partement
Paris, RF 36521
by Herv?
race"
and
ability
infinity"; what
of
it in touch
kept
was
India,
folly,"
the Celts'
secrets
"the
including
source
of
the
of
similar
expressed
feelings
to their
In opposition
about
continuity
Brittany.44
the Romans,
who
stood
for instrumental
reason,
d'enfance
Breton
that
itive world,"
"an
traveled
of man
"Celtic
character
In a semifictionalized account of his decisive 1863 trip to the
declared
the
"Dramatic
had
as
terized
character:
. . ."42
with her
of a Druidic
grandiose
figure
priestess.
was
a
in
Interest
much
of
Celtic
Redon
's
very
part
things
with origins
and with
fascination
With
the Ro
the primitive.
to which
at
mantic
remained
the artist
movement,
deeply
the Celts
and
their
the Druids,
had been
tached,
class,
priestly
as the true ancestors
hailed
of the French
nation.
Brittany
the Parthenon,
symbolized
by
from
the heart
the "Druidic"
and
he
Pays Basque,
ancient
homeland,"
773
of a
evocation
imaginative
female
yet another
or Saint
on
John, pastel
du Louvre,
cm). Mus?e
Parsifal
(64 X 49
Arts Graphiques,
fonds du Mus?e
d'Orsay,
in the
domain;
(artwork
public
photograph
?
the RMN)
Lewandowski,
who
and
REDON
1886,
(11.8
8
Wagn?rienne
the Stickney
on white wove
in black
lithograph
X 9.9 cm),
in La Revue
published
1886). The Art Institute of Chicago,
BY ODILON
METAMORPHOSIS
idealism,
access
and
with
to extract
charac
the
"prim
disinterestedness,
to the royaume
de
f?erie,
kingdom.45
On August 15, 1891, shortlybefore Redon created Parsifal I
and Druidess, Edouard Sch?re published in the widely read
Revue
des Deux
in which
claimed
lost
its "distinct
live
in
the
French
as
nation
some
genius,"
preparing
In a later historical
urrection."46
vival,
the same
soul"
as
"the
feeling
sense
of
the
and
the
mantic
sense
of
and
soul."
literature
Les
teaubriand's
these
a Druidess
irrational,
"Celtic
the occult
in Woman
the Divine
The
had
martyrs,
soul"
"deep
sudden
and
about
and
re
of the Celtic
and
as well
in Love,"
res
"splendid
the Celtic
of Nature
powers
and
to
continued
consciousness
study
the three "arcanes
defined
clairvoyance
between
connection
of
author
of
the legends
Brittany,
race may
the Celtic
have
"Celtic
its
superior
of
on
a
long essay
that
although
the
nationality,"
Mondes
he
Given
the
the
as
the
intimate
prophecy.47
ideas of femininity,
the primitive,
to be the ideal
incarnation
had
most
appeared
ou Le
influential
druidess
in Fran?ois-Ren?
triomphe
de
la
religion
from
de
Ro
Cha
chr?tienne
(The Martyrs, or The Triumph of the Christian Religion), of
which Redon possessed a copy in the 1809 original edition.48
Inspired
by
the
story
of Vell?da,
a
first-century
Germanic
774
ART BULLETIN
2007 VOLUME
DECEMBER
LXXXIX
4
NUMBER
9 Redon,
Roland
69, oil on canvas,
48.5 cm). Mus?e
deposit
Bordeaux,
at Roncevaux,
1868
24 X 19V6 in. (61 X
RF
on
Paris,
d'Orsay,
at the Mus?e
des
Beaux-Arts,
in the
(artwork
1984.47
public domain; photograph by Lysiane
Gauthier,
Mus?e
?
des
Beaux-Arts,
Bordeaux)
who
priestess-prophetess
revolt against
the Romans,
a
third-century
priestesses
Gaul
had
last of
Druidess,
the
ministering
the Batavians'
supported
Chateaubriand
gave
the nine
of
sanctuary
the
failed
name
her
oracular
ends
to
virgin
on
?le de
Sein,
which the Druids buried their dead.49 The hero of the book,
the Greek-born
mander
of
Christian
Eudore,
witnessed
Brittany,
appointed
her
attempt
to raise
a
revolt
cliff. As
Eudore's
his
the Gauls
touching
itual charms
condemns
rose
to avenge
and
innocence
and
in a dramatic
resistance
memorable
the
took
as barbaric
her
figure,
narrator
pays
and
her
own
nighttime
she
honor,
superstitious
intention
Chateaubriand's
to prove
the
invention
physical
and
a
gave
on
the
It is as
shore.
or
drama
entitled
in the
a
spir
he
reference
post-1871
is in line with the
of the Christian
faith.
superiority
became
of
the
part
quickly
"leg
fire
cult
and
and
of
the
through
sources"
find
not
may
source
he explained
homage,
although
her beliefs,
including
her claim to be a fairy.This condemnation
author's
by
proclaimed
life. Vell?da
is thus
to whose
vivid
scene
artists well
its
many
inspired
beyond
the
Breton
Le
1883,
painter
Jules-Eug?ne
a
of Vell?da's
first appear
descriptive
rendering
ance in Les martyrs (Fig. 19) as witnessed by Eudore hidden
teaubriand
among her people and quickly put an end to itwhile taking
her prisoner. She then fell in love with him and eventually
overcame
nepveu
and
remote
from Redon
as Roche
'sDruidess
grosse's Knight with theFlowers is from his Parsifal. But Cha
com
Roman
of Brittany"
in
Thus,
time.
been
the
In
which
Vercing?torix,
cause
of French
or
only
even
their
"doctrine
of
1887,
attempted
In his
rejuvenation.
vigor.50
and
Vercing?torix
Gwynfea,
the
of
"weakness
our
is built
Vercing?torix
Gwynfea,
a
virgin
were
"the
of the soul
world
"old
generation"
two
around
free Hero
priestess
the
and
of B?len,
preface,
theAryans'
of the heavenly
origin
to the divine
such
a
published
to enlist Vell?da
its return
possibility
of existences":
the cycle
in which
the main
Sch?re
that the Celts had brought to Gaul
new
Seer."51
have
for Druidess.
the
. . .
national
might
figures,
inspired
and
predicts
UNFOLDING
The Cask of Amontillado,
10 Redon,
1883,
1414 X 123/h in. (36.2 X 31.4 cm).
fonds
des Arts Graphiques,
D?partement
paper,
RF
Paris,
35.822
by G?rard Blot, ?
the
supports
rise
of Vercing?torix,
the Roman
against
rix, however,
is not
and
pressures
her
she
loses
her
content
to
who
and
powers
but
prisoner
to ask
refuses
to him
for
and
appears
Gwynfea
The
between
hero
relationship
on what
to some
extent
Sch?re
shining
heaven.
pends
Druids'
of
doctrine
the
three
circles
is a bottomless
Anoun)
matter
abyss
life; Abred
animal
and
laid
the Gallic
she
he
pardon,
him
the way
and
Woodner,
New
is
sorrow!
Fearful
a
aloud."54
to
de
prophetess
to be
explains
of existence:
Anhwn
corresponding
is the circle
Sch?re
Vell?da,
utters
while
lets Gwynfea
his
goes
out!
It is not
light
of
nothingness,
herself
tearing
deserve
after
The
kiss
remorse
and
our
on
heaven
darkness
have
away
close
the altar
vanishes.
and
following
her say, and
from
attention:
death!"53
details
One
the
with
the words
she
arms
the Fire
heart!
my
of
Parsifal crying after being kissed by Kundry: "Amfortas! The
wound!
The
wound!
It burns
within
my
heart!
O
a
sorrow!
of my
be
resemblance
writer
prolific
the depths
can
From
fortuitous
fervent
and
heart
ruled
Wagnerite,
it cries
out
since
had
pub
lished in 1875 a book entitled Le drame musical, the second
of which
was
to
Wagner's
devoted
"work
and
it
idea";
It appears
that Sch?re
conceived
Gwyn
deliberately
as a female
to Parsifal,
and
(in some aspects)
counterpart
a
as
in Vercing?torix
the kiss scene
symmetrical?with
gender
fea
inversion
sorrow,
of
dramatic
the
climax
Redon
Les
one
the
representing
work.
point
Wagner's
that had
made
the book
the
protagonists?to
the turning
and
a
of
copy
possessed
name
in 1889,
Sch?re's
in
initi?s:
grands
de Thistoire
Esquisse
secr?tedes religions (The Great Initiates: A Study in the Secret
History of Religions). Itwas inscribed with the dedication "en
tr?s sympathique hommage" (in friendly homage), but when
it is not
On
known.56
25, 1892,
February
of Vercing?torix with a letter of thanks
in it
learn
for the gracious
of the same
We
reception
day.57
a set for one
to
that Redon
had declared
himself
ready
design
at Paul
to be
that were
of the two scenes
of the
staged
play
exactly
Sch?re
he
received
sent him
a copy
Fort's Th??tre d'Art, specifically, the Temple
fourth
Horror,
abyss!
is reminded
Sch?re,
A
1886.,0
it is on
union
it burns
domain)
volume
power
Vercing?torix's
"The
Fire,
any more,
...
I saw
in the
public
(artwork
was newly edited and augmented with a study of Parsifal in
to unconscious
his
York
(or
of
but in her case,
her priesthood,
virginity and abdicates
a
her
and
she
obtains
entreaty,
redeeming
protege's
Chateaubriand
after her self-inflicted
death. Whereas
shame
on
charcoal
1895,
the
transmigration
to the human
is the superior
world;
Gwynfyd
corresponding
circle
of
which
inhabits
until
she steps
Gwynfea
happiness,
a
to
catches
down
level
and
Vercing?torix's
horrifying
of the
glimpse
abyss.52
an
In
twist to Les
Sch?re
gave
interesting
Vercing?torix,
source:
like
loses her
his
immediate
Vell?da,
martyrs,
Gwynfea
Eudore's
ca.
with Thorns,
She
is dead;
while
shows
Crowned
paper, 2214 X 1814 in. (50 X 37.5 cm). Collection of Dian
consents,
are defeated.
his
Head
11 Redon,
Vercing?to
communion
kills herself in the belief that Vercing?torix
made
775
d'Orsay,
unites
the Gauls
REDON
photograph
occupation.
their
spiritual
her
love. When
him
tan
BY ODILON
METAMORPHOSIS
Louvre,
du Mus?e
with
give
superior
du
domain;
the RMN)
in a revolt
tribes
in the
public
(artwork
on
charcoal
Mus?e
A LITHOGRAPHIC
becomes
scene
of
the
third
lover.
Vercing?torix's
for a small
inspired
drawing,
on the
program
reproduced
the
act,
one
of
of Fire for the
in which
In addition,
by
and
one
Fort
the
asked
Gwynfea
Redon
two scenes,
in a forthcoming
to be
history
of
ART BULLETIN
776
2007 VOLUME
DECEMBER
LXXXIX
NUMBER
4
14 Simeon Solomon, A Design for a Motif fromParsifal, 1894,
on paper,
18%
pencil
Private
collection
(artwork
blue
X
in.
25%
X
(47.5
in the public
64.5
domain;
by Jos? Manuel Costa Alves, Lisbon)
cm).
photograph
lilfrSgJ?
???M?
12 Henri
Fantin-Latour,
and
Parsifal
theFlower Maidens,
1885,
lithograph, 17% X 12V&in. (45 X 30.7 cm) (artwork in the
public domain; photograph provided by the Biblioth?que de
Gen?ve,
Charles
Collection
Geneva,
Meunier
575,
pi.
59)
15 Still
Syberberg,
replacing
and directed
from Parsifal, written
by Hans
J?rgen
II
Parsifal
TMS
Film Munich,
1981-82,
showing
I after Kundry's
kiss
Parsifal
of
appearance
tion."60
the
over,
13 Georges-Antoine
Rochegrosse,
92M> X 147%
1894, oil on canvas,
Paris, RF 898
(artwork ?
d'Orsay,
could
The Knight with theFlowers,
in. (235 X 375 cm). Mus?e
photograph by Daniel Arnaudet, ?
2007,
ProLitteris,
the RMN)
Sch?re
d'Assas,
Schur?'s
the
tice,
For
theater.58
the
apparently
sets were
Redon's
program
of
"may well
have
the
an
unknown
eventually
Druidess
play.59
been
led
Ted
to
reason,
created
was
Gott
approach
maybe
by Paul
the
short
S?rusier,
dating
Vercing?torix
read
have
no
but
on
the
printed
reproduced
has
that Sch?re
suggested
Redon
by the fortuitous
only
publication
of Huysmans's
and Mellerio's
receiving
become
Zurich;
and
creation
1891,
the
However,
Redon's
on
the Druidess
been
it, or
eve
own
of his
produc
evidence
regarding
chronological
II?is
of Druidess?and
Parsifal
catalog
had
the
note
dating
available
heard
of
of
thanks
to October
11,
to 1892. More
the prints
since
1887, and Redon
its story
line,
well
before
art had
a
the author.
copy from
By 1892, Redon's
in which
circles
and occultist
with
the mystic
popular
were
was
in
the Rue
both
's
greatest;
living
reputation
has
Leeman
and
Fred
compared
convincingly
to Redon's
of art
of the
conception
goal
syncretism
and his fusion of Christian and Buddhist themes.61 Even if
Druidess had appeared by chance just as Sch?re was planning
a
Redon
of Vercing?torix
and without
staging
seem
not
does
the
plausible?this
play?which
on shared
interests.
ideas and
rested
being
aware
coincidence
of
A LITHOGRAPHIC
UNFOLDING
Head
16 Leonardo,
S. Maria
delle
in
Last
study for The
Supper
di Brera, Milan,
by
photograph
albumen
silver print. Collection
in the
(artwork and photograph
L?on
G?rard,
1857-58,
Dietmar
Siegert, Munich
public domain)
Polarities
and
It is clear
and
that as
had
"the Druidess"
in fin de
on
by
si?cle
tales.
origins,
de Bretagne
This was a
in the
collective
of
legend
Celtic
transmitted
orally
populaires
for Wagner,
point
significant
of Perceval/Parzival
legends
especially
this affinity was based
derived
from
the
the Grail
since
anciens
de
had
and
legends
whose
interest
stimulated
been
it was
a
by
1842 Contes
la Villemarqu?'s
and
Bretons,
"Parsifal"
entities,
in common,
features
many
some extent,
his reading of Th?odore
des
cultural
To
France.
their
mati?re
their
Inversions
now
crucial
one
for
Schur?, who insisted in his 1891 essay that the Celtic bards
had given birth to the Arthurian legends culminating in
Perceval's
both
roots?and
dimension
versal
they
of
the Grail.62
the Druidess
were
also
hopes
condition
specifically
of a national
expressed
were
not
members
typical of the Romantic
a
of
to
a
powers.
foolish
or
access
to
the Druidess's,
but
symmetry
as a chaste
identity:
was
Parsifal
relatively
"masculine"
atively
duct.
and
was
boy
reason
of her
seen,
of
and
power
exploited
it explicit
This
direct.
sexual
of a seer,
something
was
rel
the Druidess
and
while
"feminine,"
more
in matters
obvious
young
made
was
to action
most
by
have
as we
Sch?re,
access
his
inverted
this
con
heroic
complementary
act and
speak like a female Parsifal; he also let her define herself as
na
combining
a uni
renewal?with
closed
to reason
however,
superiority,
a contradiction
insane,
the
the differences
world,
and Symbolist image of the artist.63
their
for
as
like the two
them appear
complementary,
they made
access
to the
of a
Parsifal's
halves
symbol.
spiritual
yin-yang
was
more
than
and progressive
thus mediated,
unconscious
idess,
"primitive"
forest,
truths
This
As
exerted.
en
by their
endangered
and by the attraction
they
Parsifal
and
the Dru
between
inevitably
world
character
Parsifal
syncretic
religiosity.
of
and
just part
legend,
myth,
epic,
caste
of the select
of heroes
and
superior
and
chastity,
purity
with
the material
gagement
others,
in a
to
777
among
Redon,
the
access
prophets,
having
and possessing
redeeming
them appear
could
make
And
For
therefore
figures
belonged
in nature
and
steeped
tional
and
quest
REDON
on cream
in gray-green
17 Redon,
Closed Eyes, 1890,
lithograph
X 914 in. (31.2 X
wove
to
chine
affixed
1214
paper,
ivory
of Chicago,
the Stickney
Collec
24.2 cm). The Art Institute
in the public
domain;
tion, 1920.1672
(artwork
photograph
by the Art Institute of Chicago)
provided
of Christ,
Museo
Grazie,
BY ODILON
METAMORPHOSIS
spiritual
realm
was
the
yes,
twin of
spiritual
immortal
your
the hero
by
having
Vercing?torix:
Gwynfea
"I am
sister,
your
sister!"64
as
in
the two figures
they existed
to the
between
relationship
genetic
reason
seems
a
to consider
to me
the two prints,
compelling
a double
as
Druidess
and
image. We
forming
together
Parsifal
This
Redon's
between
relation
time,
in addition
have seen in the album Homage
Redon
had
had
such
a
contrast
to Goya (Figs. 20, 21)
in mind
for
several
that
years.
Beyond his work, Parsifal/Druidess is in good company: polar
images
or
images
of polarity,
combining
traits
from
the
two
ART
778
DECEMBER
BULLETIN
2007 VOLUME
LXXXIX
4
NUMBER
18 Redon, Profile ofLight, 1886, lithograph on paper, 12 X
9V2
in.
(30.4
Stickney
photograph
24.2
of one
common
or
Janus-like
sical antiquity
to motifs
Institute of Chicago,
in the
(artwork
public
the Art Institute of Chicago)
by
several
in most
heads
Art
cm). The
1920.1597
provided
elements
are
X
Collection,
dualities,
if not
all
societies
the
domain;
that of gender,
including
and periods,
from the
"the
in Clas
representing
Dionysus
Hybrid"
to African
bisexual
anthropomorphic
statues
in popular
visual
culture.65
Many
or
to
have
been
used
the
simultaneous
techniques
produce
or
two
same
of
of
alternative
the
presence
aspects
images
it includes
and
the list is constantly
image,
expanding:
paint
on both
same
sides
of
the
ing
support?several
Byzantine
an
on
of the
icons of Saint George
have
the
image
Virgin
and
back?and
case
of
the
still present
on
or
zigzag-shaped
T-shaped
and
Lamellenbilder)',
Riefelbilder
"composite
ages on one
so-called
portraiture"
negative);
3D-stereo
industrial
printing
and,
photomosaics;
of direction
change
of
particular
the image,
of
often
of
the French typeof playing cards.66
and
image
relations
between
interpretations
and
can
one
of complementarity
be manifold,
the
of
ranging
to one
their
from
popular
for our
180 degrees,
two elements
of diametric
as
re
and
topic,
as
a
in
of a double
are
combination
a statement
im
with
such as morphing
relevance
and
such
techniques
particularly
images,
the
(in
supports
photomontage
of several
superimposition
(the
ligious imagery; digital manipulations
Semantic
on
19 Jules-Eug?ne
Vell?da, Moon
Effect, 1883, oil
Lenepveu,
in. (231 X 131.5 cm). Mus?e
des Beaux
91 X 51%
canvas,
in the
Arts, Quimper
domain)
(artwork
public
of
varied
identity
opposition
to
and
mutual
tion,
truth,
exclusion.
they
were
appearance
element
in times
Especially
to
be
understood
apt
versus
to the other
was
reality,
of conflict
and
in terms
the passage
and
of
disrup
lie versus
from
one
as an unveil
construed
polemically
or
of direction
In this context,
the change
ing
unmasking.
of the top/
associations
benefited
from
the anthropological
demon
Bakhtin
has
bottom
Mikhail
famously
opposition.
of the
dimension
strated
the subversive
top
carnivalesque
and
ritualized
inversions
of values,
but
temporary
pling
to
the
and
reinforce
tended
confirm
eventually
ironically
This
is
hierarchies
they apparently
particularly
disrupted.67
in the case of the mundus
evident
inversus, a theme developed
on
in
in
and
from
the sixteenth
still vivid
century
prints
In the "world
turned
nineteenth-century
imagery.
popular
and children
their
animals
their masters
down,"
whip
upside
men
women
The
and
and
roles.68
parents,
exchange
gender
inversion
forms
the
center
of
an
early
example
of
this
ico
UNFOLDING
METAMORPHOSIS
BY ODILON
REDON
77g
toil 'Ktv?tf
??-?
in the Sky a Face ofMystery,
1885,
in black on
pi.
lithograph
light gray chine
to ivory wove paper,
affixed
IIV2 X 9V? in. (29 X 23.9 cm).
The Art Institute of Chicago,
the Stickney
Collection,
I Saw
In My Dream
Redon,
to
1 of Homage
Goya,
20
A LITHOGRAPHIC
21 Redon, Upon Awakening I Saw theGoddess of theIntelligible
with Her
Severe and Hard
on
in black
lithograph
to
1885, pi. 6 of Homage
Goya,
to ivory wove
affixed
chine
Profile,
light gray
paper, 1014 X 814 in. (27 X 21.5 cm). The Art Instituteof
1920.1587 (artwork in the public domain; photograph
provided by theArt Instituteof Chicago)
the Stickney
Chicago,
domain;
public
1920.1593
Collection,
photograph
by
provided
in the
(artwork
the Art Institute of
Chicago)
a bearded
man,
22):
(Fig.
wearing
a distaff, kneels
at the feet of a woman
nography
holding
a sword,
with
a hen
mounts
The
(and
a
lance;
long
dress
a bit
and
passage
garb
in which
image-devinette,
question
one
ering
most
expressed
or several
common
these
in
reproduced
iconic
device
features?generally
of direction
change
in the
1938
the
of
caption
features
employed
one
of
or
"paranoiac-critical
and
turbaned
"reveals"
The
down
the man's
neck
sultan/favorite
heads"
a
favorite
In an
often
also
image
printed
the
the
23).70
belongs
on cards,
upside
It is worth
of the
bearded
noting
Parsifal/Druidess,
the woman's
to
the
type
matchboxes,
a
in
headdress.
of
and
"upside
so on,
(Fig.
each
Spanish
between
of
series
male
1875
and
the simultaneous
24),
on
and
aspect
female
of
presence
is in me
"What
the
uses
/ Once
explicit:
vanity,
// If you fall in love with me,
pretty
gravity.
that I am a
one,
/ Be aware
hermaphrodite."71
This
has monstrous
but
in the
features,
"hermaphrodite"
fin de si?cle,
the figure of the androgyne
became
increasingly
reversed,
shows
an
one,
ideal
in connection
traditional
from
with
roles
sexual
the
and
social
and
final
form
of mankind,
its
ideal was approached
This
divide,
with
figures
of young
"archetype"
and
from both
men
and
on
Drawing
de Balzac's
to Honor?
Plato's
that
changes
identities.
Symposium
authors
"Decadent"
and
Symbolist
Seraphita,
sion of male
and
female
traits in one
person
defined
as
the
fu
the original
its salvation.72
sides of the usual
young
women
display
seen
in Parsifal
symmetrical
indeterminacy
was
in
the Druidess.
The
evoked
androgyne
frequently
the works
of Gustave
Edward
Fernand
Moreau,
Burnejones,
other
in the "literary"
and many
artists,
Khnopff,
especially
ing
and
down,
A
to oscillate
is made
challenged
sources
many
conceal
in such antecedents
into
a
example,
of the
a member
interpretation,
considered
sultan,
turns
to
figures?was
of
(Fig.
to answer
undated
Hugnet,
similarity in Redon's
compositional
which
of
face
that of his
several
image.
by Georges
asked
the drawing
by discov
within
it. The
hidden
draftsmen
by
Surrealist group who delighted
method"
were
spectators
sexes
both
on
commenting
to the other.
analogy
instance
In one
busts.
joyed its heyday was the picture puzzle known in French as
the
captions
from one
the beard/hair
further,
saw a surge of double
century
images
as
an
of
and
ones)
part
exploration
exploita
and
by cartoonists
independent,
ambiguity
A
artists
that then en
alike.69
genre
popular
"avant-garde"
two
with
late nineteenth
multiple
of visual
tion
on
proudly
leaning
a rooster.
a
in man's
the
we
have
branch of Symbolism gathered from 1892 on by the flamboy
ant "S?r" Jos?phin P?ladan
around his Salons de la
in Paris.73 Redon explicitly declined P?ladan 's
Rose+Croix
ART BULLETIN
780
DECEMBER
LXXXIX
2007 VOLUME
4
NUMBER
LEGRAND TURC ETSA FAVORITE
This Way Goes theWorld Turned Upside Down,
late
detail,
on paper.
Nationale
de
century,
engraving
Biblioth?que
Cabinet
des Estampes,
Paris
in the public
France,
(artwork
16th
22
CHERCHEZ LA FAVORITE?
domain)
23
The
and His
Sultan
late
Favorite,
to
invitation
in the first of
participate
there
were
time
that Redon
links
indirect
many
created
Parsifal
these
two men
and
Druidess?4
In a
at
hero"
with
same
P?ladan
of his
that
is compatible
with male
positivity"
Marie
Th?r?se
whose
Gastelier,
pianist
and Tristan
had
reminded
P?ladan
of
in
experienced
head
Bayreuth.
"? la Correggio
of a musical
"hands
the
year,
published
La d?cadence
latine under
cycle of novels
a
This
of
"modern
story
'androgyne.
fifteen-year-old
of appearance
of nerves
"all the femininity
and
androgyne."75
volume
eighth
the title L
the
This
was
to the
dedicated
execution
of Parsifal
sensations
he had
the
to admire
him
enabled
her
and parsifalized' before kissing her
. . ,"76
Druidess.
Process
the
Given
between
inverted
the cultural
character
widespread
on
symmetry
existing
of Parsifal
figures
of "upside-down
a
and
semantic
and
one may
the topicality
of the androgyne,
a
to conclude
that far from
being
meaningless
I into Druidess
the transformation
of Parsifal
dent,
zles,
and
resulted
from
predetermined
far in the
warning
a conscious
program.
opposite
that Redon
intention
This,
direction,
gave
Andr?
and
however,
and
we
Mellerio
level
the Druidess,
heads"
the
visual
puz
be
tempted
acci
studio
must
have
to a
corresponded
would
must
pay
be
going
to
heed
a few years
in
published
35 (artwork
the
letter of
January 10, 1891, to Edmond Picard, Redon defined the
lithographed version of Closed Eyes (Fig. 17) as "the head of an
In
(1938):
but
exhibitions,
the
between
19th century,
Minotaureb
"Devinettes,"
Hugnet,
Georges
in the
domain)
public
later
too
the
as
the
latter was
asked
him
hand.
Such
"relative
preparing
the
about
a
abandoned
quickly
enchanting
sovereign
tions that
lady,
take us
the role
stressed
concepts"
could
replied,
Redon
action"
unexpected
she who
was
and
often
"in
the way
along
and
the artist's
"preliminary
concept,
indirect
and
of
the catalog
of
paths
to us
reveals
but
an
to
a
only
initial plan
follow
the
our
imagination,
seduc
magnificent
conquer
by surprise?and
and
of the artistic materials,
his
guiding
exert
order
the
and
prints
us."
Instead,
confided
he
that he
to
a sheet
of blank
and
needed
by
paper"
or any other medium,
it in charcoal,
pencil,
on
life to it."77 He
and
this operation
emphasized
gives
the
of materials,
several
occasions
this agency
comparing
it has
"Matter
reveals
creative
with divination:
secrets,
process
was
"horrified
"scribble
over
its own
genius;
speak."78
These
declarations
show
they
Druidess
artist
as
that
it
the
is
matter
through
prophetic
not
the
will
oracle
our
in two ways. First,
subject
the
character
of Parsifal
and
illuminate
corresponded
seer but
also
that
only
to his
to Redon's
image
of the
of
the
artistic
understanding
onto
of a "way" opening
"unexpected
metaphor
to the
Parsifal?
is similar
"wandering"
performed
by
paths"
after
in tales of chivalry?especially
like so many
knights
curse:
shall not find:
"The way you seek,
that / You
Kundry's
process.
His
/ For the paths and ways / That
lead you fromme, / I curse
UNFOLDING
them
for you:
paths
and
interview
as
artistic
theme
she
the
by way
domain
was
quest
added
BY ODILON
METAMORPHOSIS
REDON
7g1
"along
his
of
of the
implied
by
explicit by Joseph Beuys in an
von Graevenitz,
who
pointed
Antje
common
to the composer
and
with
a
sense,
reaches
eventually
an
with
analogy
wandering
in a
and,
and would be made
Wagner
After
Wander!"79
suffering"
Parsifal
wandering,
Grail.
The
ing
When
/ Wander!
error
of
A LITHOGRAPHIC
to wander
the
heroes
that Wagner's
artist.80
abandon
wandering
on the
that Parsifal,
contrary,
replied
to find the secret"
and
is led to the highest
"wanders
spiritual
an
of this quest
aim. He
gave
interpretation
epistemological
con
to contradict
him
Friedrich
Nietzsche's
that enabled
control
and
of
Wagner
attainment
demnation
with
fail, Beuys
the
to reconcile
and
of
"spiritual
a new
is always
or herself,
and
himself
wanders
is."81
really
statements
of
searching
someone
who
who
being,
keeps
at the end of his or
is never
the Grail
is what
This
ideal
"In
human
there
opposing
her evolution.
the
truths":
as we
had
imply
already
on
I with
started
imagined,
working
Parsifal
the intention
of representing
Parsifal
but
rather may
have
or
him along
the way. A
discovered
comparison
"recognized"
was
with
the "predeter
with Parsifal
II, which
certainly
begun
confirms
this hy
mined
of representing
Parsifal,
concept"
Redon's
Second,
not
he may
original
Redon
composition,
elements
chitectural
of
and
examination
of
Redon's
additions
and
of
drawing
in a way
Parsifal
was
ar
vaguely
rather
left, which,
left with
itself more
Max
less
on
the
extensive
crayon,
lithographic
horizontal
in
Redon
Ernst's
especially
already
chain
the
used
his
imagination,
the case
of
In
since
follow
mentioned
the grid
also
have
order
to avoid
been
design
a
onto
impression
transfer process
selves,
on
tween
the printer's
the
other
printer.
when
guesses
He
newly
hand,
and
stone.
grained
could
travel
the artist's
nothing,"
have
Redon
in
in
back
studio.84
and
a role
about
the
them
forth
be
transforma
The
taken place
played
complained
stones
The
an
in the print
in it.
the
harmful
and
latter's
and
he
Plank
double
reversible
head,
in the
public
(artwork
1875,
Spain.
domain;
the
fact
participation
when
deplorable
on
insisted
the
that
as
an
"precious
or
it senses
artist's
nence:
a
union
with
"One makes
temporary,
badly matched
should
and get
the printer,
and
it is sensible
that one
agree
a work
two
of art is not made
by
people.
along with him. But
a
One
of them must
The
with
marriage
comparison
yield."85
a
was
to comment
that "Redon
led Pat Gilmour
essentially
not
of art as collaboration
and
loner who
could
conceive
a
inability with
nineteenth-century
conception
An examination
of Redon's
relation?profes
as
not
Falte does
his wife Camille
private?with
if any at
in any case,
this contention,
few artists
but,
this
coupled
of
marriage."86
as well
sional
support
the time would
their
artistic
Redon
from
ing
the
preemi
have
trial proofs
Redon's
must
sensitive
The
and
especially
a
goes
status.
conclusion
"matches"
of a collaboration
conceived
authority.
the printer
truly participatory
these
lithographs had towork very closely with the
defined
intuitive,
been
of
paper:
autographic
to
it was
pull
scraping,
possible
a sheet and
onto
then shift it via
the printer
artist producing
have
may
up,
elements
by way
tion of Parsifal I may also have
and
workshop
In retrospect,
and
this grid
made
extensive
of a
close
"architectural"
transformation of Parsifal I into Druidess
spired by it. The
could
visible
is clearly
The
part.
with
der
photograph provided by Julian Rothenstein)
properly
prepared,
the
often
exploited
it
beneath
while
placed
frottages.83
a laid paper,
marks
upper
cover
Van
liquid
formed by the finely spaced vertical laid lines and the coarsely
spaced
24 Matchbox
Collection
paper,
Any
that he
lithographers'
or
effects
anteceding
I, it appears
see.
leading
a close
what
of
or of a
support
to stimulate
and
sheet
textural
we
compositions
lithographic
onto
then
transferred
and
transfer,
one
the
the process
knowledge
can
yield.
with
scrapers.82
for
the
are
stone
the
various
for
his
which
corrections
used
structure
traits of the
the
of
about
a
and
drew
autographic
he
stone;
and
the
in favor
methods
working
paper,
on
made
be
on
top and
explanation
II, we
Parsifal
the prints
generally
tusche,
the
abandoned
no
gave
to Druidess
Redon
at
"paths"
Redon
could
the main
eliminated
also
to the Parsifal iconography, look like vestigial
than belonging
remains
and
have
(Fig. 1): while reproducing
pothesis
Since
that,
long
about
be
way
the
related
challenging
intuition
from
toward
duration
to his
expected
the master
granting
and
relatively
by
pull
a
him
success
of
frequent
changes of printing partner. In early 1887, he had stopped
working with the Lemercier firm,which had editioned all his
lithographs
stones
from
the
his
until
1894.
Becquet's
personality
who
start, in favor of Becquet,
printed
about
is known
Unfortunately,
nothing
The
and his collaboration
with Redon.
ART
782
BULLETIN
DECEMBER
2007 VOLUME
LXXXIX
NUMBER
4
25
a Blue Bonnet,
Young Girl in
207/h X
1890s, pastel,
39.5 cm). Mus?e
Redon,
probably
15V2 in.
early
(53 X
d'Orsay,
Paris,
RF
40493
(artwork
in
the public domain; photograph by
Herv?
two must
not
be
have
I was
that
agreed
editioned.
Did
Parsifal
Redon
chance
a failure
to see
the
and
stone
down in the studio and think of turning the unhappy
into a new
one,
possibly
encouraged
by
ible heads and visual puzzles?87 Did
Redon
Parsifal?
"recycle"
We
have
the result
seen
before
that
could
image
for revers
the vogue
the printer propose
a new
producing
of orientation
include
changes
"way" could
of subject matter
In fact, many
(Figs. 5, 6).
to be discovered:
one
to
give only
example
and
such
that
version
of Redon's
the meanders
of
creative
redirections
cases
remain
involving
heads
a second
(prob
and a reversal of 180 degrees, the pastel Young Girl in a Blue
Bonnet
(Fig.
25),
turned
upside
down,
reveals
ably female) profile slightly to the right of the first one and
running parallel to it,with the eye at the level of themouth
and vice versa. Whether Redon intentionally left enough of
this earlier
is hard
stage
to
say,
of the work
but
he
visible
clearly
for an expert
relished
the
eye
to notice
ambiguity
mystery
created
by
and
the RMN)
of working
in
has
layers, which
method"
"archaeological
by Gert Mat
in
Stratis.88
depth
by Harriet
of one
head
into another
is more
this way
been
upside
?
Lewandowski,
the
aptly named
tenklott
and analyzed
The
metamorphosis
a
in
than in the case
straightforward
Young Girl in Blue Bonnet
to each
of
I / Druidess:
the faces
Parsifal
correspond
closely
are
inverted.
the passage
from
other
and
Conversely,
"simply"
as a
I to Druidess
is far from obvious,
Parsifal
comparison
between
the
the Druidess's
two demonstrates
headdress
with
(Figs. 2, 4). The
her
veil emerges
(and without significant modification)
Parsifal's
bust
uncovered
face
her
own
which
well
and
bust
did not completely
as his mouth,
nose,
of hindsight?the
Parsifal
I considered
by his mantle,
eyes.
To
of
part
effortlessly
from the portion of
but
constructing
required
disregarding?and
succeed?the
outline
and
front
sense?with
her
erasing,
of his neck,
as
the benefit
possibility of the Druidess pattern latent in
upside
down,
it is necessary
to concen
A LITHOGRAPHIC
UNFOLDING
on
trate
the
tonal
rather
values
on
than
to
and
the outlines
ignore the representational functions of the forms while
probing their iconic potential. In thisway, the ectoplasm-like
bright zone formed by the illuminated side of Parsifal's neck
and
can
dress,
to
connected
face,
coalesce
crescent
the
a female
into
as
interpreted
a head
profile.
It is worth reflecting on the cognitive abilities and
state
psychological
for abstraction
capacity
sentation
but
is what
the
studio
process.
to
opposed
it in the end. To
serves
and
practice
It
is not
that
rather
a
in such
involved
art
the
some
a
requires
iconic
repre
this
extent,
of
notion
theoretical
macchia, the "blot" inwhich the nucleus of a composition is
contained and out of which itmay develop, had been about
In
the Renaissance.89
since
most
sketches,
spectacularly
were
which
by
the
his
used
but
have
iconic
or
function
defined
in
the
1857
childish perception
"innocence
of
the
as
eye"
sort
"a
of
of what
they
some
and
signify,"
with
a
on
gaze
"pure
was
the evocative
their
eyes" and advocated
most
Redon
interested
What
its
disregard,
iconic
ability
to stimulate
invention
that
interpretations?aspects
and
explored
in his works
expressed
things."92
virtue of this
and
lead
to other
had
indeed
Leonardo
and
the process he had initiated, which accounts for his letting
successive
shine
layers
traces
and
sighted
through
of
the
obliterating
his
of
instead
surface
How
"meandering."
this attitude
about
was
he
articulate
their
he wrote,
which,
in the double
within
will
The
can
be
forms
being
produced
active beholder;
of
the
were
artist's
that are
from
called
in fact, they delegated
agency.
is also
This
state
onlooker's
in this manner
in a more
doing
to come
about
the
what
and
explicit
(images
or
into being
of mind."93
for a
particularly
to the beholder part
the
images-devinettes
deterministic
way,
and
their popularity at the time both supported and attested to
the
of such
availability
an active,
even
manipulative
using
sense
remarkable
of
the
approach
dynamism
of
to
forms
extract from the engraved lines of The Martyrdom of Saint
Catherine the "hidden" figure of the already decapitated
saint.94
Whereas
the commercial
designers
of visual
puzzles
would
normally start their drawings with the intention of hiding
something
Redon
rials
and
and
an
idea
of what
they
wanted
to
conceal,
let himself be led by the suggestions of artisticmate
associations
of
ideas.
This
means
that
the
"way"
seen
have
that
front
the
of
part
the Dru
from
rest of the bust. Ifwe reconsider the inverted Parsifal I (Fig.
4) in this light,we understand that the outline of Parsifal's
shoulder has actually disrupted another outline linking the
headdress to her train; a new look at Druidess (Fig.
shows
that
Redon had only to obliterate the rest of Parsi
2)
Druidess's
fal's
bust
for
this
of
shapes
to reappear.
outline
earlier
leaves
and
flowers
the
Moreover,
scattered
throughout
Parsifal I, which mostly disappear in Parsifal II, fit better into
the Celtic Druidess iconography than into the Grail context.
For
all
these
it seems
reasons,
to
logical
that
suppose
began by drawing not a Parsifal but a Druidess of
which there exists no impression. The hypothesis of this
Druidess I lying buried in Parsifal I even helps to explain
Redon
uneven
strangely
his
which
shoulders,
arm
raised
and awkward cloak do not suffice to justify.A composition
recurs
that
in Redon's
is
which
work,
to his
related
certainly
youthful infatuation with the landscape and women
for her
a
with
mountains,
steep
a female
shows
country,
Basque
head.
Redon's
in
bust
rising
second
of two
in front
profile
sun
setting
or
of the
a halo
forming
A
album,
lithographic
Edgar
Poe, included a version of it in 1882 (Fig. 26), the 1885
Br?nnhilde (Fig. 7) significantly connected it to aWagnerian
and
warrior,
another
version
would
in 1896
appear
in
to Gustave Flaubert's Temptation of
Saint Anthony (Fig. 27). The reference to Poe may have
to resort
Redon
prompted
while Flaubert's
Idaean
the Mountains"
he
close
in the 1868-69 painting
the female
to
Returning
came
the outlines
the
to delineate
first
of Melancholy,"
a
him
as "the
gave
opportu
ready
this image of divinized femininity. An
revealingly
and
sun
"black
of the goddess Cybele
in oil
version
contemporary
to its bare
approximately
the composition
hero
to the
evocation
of
Mother
essentials
paints
for Roland's
to that used
reduces
28)
(Fig.
and
the sun/halo
cape/halo
(Fig. 9): in this detail also, themale
are relatives.95
quasi-goddess
see that what
inverted
be
I, we
Parsifal
of Parsifal's
shoulders
could
have
served
two
similar
mountains.
rays can
Centrifugal
be detected in several parts of what would have been the sky
area (Parsifal's bust), most strikingly in the lower part of the
Druidess's
be
it is as
veil:
woman
to images. A few years later, in 1896, Alfred Jarry submitted a
print by Albrecht D?rer to precisely this kind of reading,
his
the
of Parsifal's
the portion
emerges
easily
more
In fact, ifmakes
his mantle.
iconic
bust uncovered
by
sense
as headdress
II Redon
in
than as shoulder,
and
Parsifal
to open
it into the
has taken care
and
up this shape
integrate
in a red
ambiguity,
and triple aspects, hints of aspects
images),
their
take
works
in continuous
"consists
We
nity to reintroduce
clear
grasped from the definition he gave in 1902 of the "sense of
mystery,"
into
work
given
the third album devoted
Redon wanted to preserve the possibility of multiple inter
pretations in his finished works and to let the viewer continue
the
one
from
continue
headdress
female
Moreover,
writings.
Druidess.
and
Parsifal's
thing that the Impressionists, Claude Monet above all, had
been pursuing.91 In 1895, Paul Val?ry expressed a radical
epistemological version of this ideal in his Introduction ? la
m?thode de L?onard de Vinci, in which he reproached most
people for seeing "with their intellectmuch more often than
as
as well
turn back,
is also
when he
recommended
of these flat stains of colour, merely as
consciousness
without
stimuli
of visual
"meaning"
783
next one. It appears that this iswhat happened with Parsifal I
numerous
abstract
nonobjective
something that John Ruskin had
such,
in
Moreau
considered
long
was
the macchia
1890s,
to be connected with existing paintings.90 Disregard
begun
ing
the
Gustave
REDON
followed was not only winding but could also occasionally
idess's
the
BY ODILON
METAMORPHOSIS
had
detected
here
are
the sun and
to this device,
if, thanks
one.
become
The
flowers
generally
absent
and
leaves
from
the
the
also
"woman-bust
but
formula,
against-sun-between-two-mountains"
that can
they
are
present inmany other images of female profiles with possible
to Druidism,
references
such
as
the
mentioned
already
Spring.The composition and proportions of the hypothetical
Druidess I are almost identical with those ofHead ofa Woman
(Fig. 28) if one leaves out its lower part, which was indeed
canceled when passing from Parsifal I toDruidess. But before
we
all
embark
its
Druidess
on
a final
successive
lis more
reconstruction
of this
we
try to
stages,
than
a
must
hypothesis
metamorphosis
establish
or, worse,
a
whether
retrospective
in
ART
784
BULLETIN
DECEMBER
2007 VOLUME
LXXXIX
NUMBER
4
Here
the Good Goddess,
the Idaean Mother
of the
(3rd
of Saint Anthony
pi. 15 of Temptation
on chine
5% X 5 in. (14.9 X
series),
appliqu?,
lithograph
d'Art et d'Histoire,
12.8 cm). Mus?e
Cabinet
des
Geneva,
in the
(artwork
domain)
Estampes
public
27 Redon,
Mountains,
Lenore Appears,
Before the Black Sun ofMelancholy,
65/s X 5 in.
[Allan] Poe, lithograph,
pi. 2 of To Edgar
of
the Stickney
(16.8 X 12.7 cm). The Art Institute
Chicago,
in the
1920.1571
Collection,
domain;
(artwork
photo
public
26
Redon,
1882,
graph provided by theArt Institute of Chicago)
and
point,
delivers
all
possible
ones with
paintings
can
help
a
"layers"
chronological
between
them
distinguish
the
the
for
used
techniques
even
drawings.96
to confirm
observations
or
scientific
note
neck
of
the corresponding
that curved
lines
already
appear. The
in Druidess
with
a pen
section
faintly visible
the spot where
indicate
of
analysis
however,
Macrophotography,
made
with
the naked
eye. If
we compare enlarged details of the Druidess
those
since,
lithograph
it im
together,
making
or to retrieve
the earlier
its
to
latter,
is
this
of
(Fig. 29) with
I
Parsifal
at the base
we
(Fig. 30),
of Parsifal's
the Druidess's
eye will
(re)imposition of this eye and other facial details
was
and
in a distinctive
fear projecting
not
drawn
lithographic
appearance
the Druidess
with
but
crayon
lithographic
which
results
tusche,
fortunately
one
for the two stages.
still
Should
onto
the
Parsifal
I, a superimposition
of the twodetails, each colored differently and slightly shifted
(Fig. 31), should dispel any doubt: when drawing the Dru
was
and
eye with a pen, Redon
retracing
accentuating
a
was
that
design
already
present.97
assume
a
We must
therefore
that Redon
began
by drawing
of the type I called
composition
"woman-bust-against-sun
elements
with
al
between-two-mountains,"
probably
vegetal
some
to an association
At
with
Druidism.
ready
pointing
idess's
and
I. The
Parsifal
tell us
reasons
for
down
upside
onto
can
of Druidess
I. What
projection
Parsifal
an
trace
of
the
former
in
the
unambiguous
unless
several
states
of it have
been
printed,
Is
1896,
transformation
in
happened
a
played
studio,
printer's
as master
in it, all the more
earlier
the
to
I
Druidess
I
into
from
comparing
presented
upside
"ghost
the ability
already
a visual
configuration
Becquet
and
design
that sometimes
images"
to
discussed
I may
Parsifal
have
may
have
who
were
printers,
of the stone, could
process
of a
etching
elements
regain
inten
produce
from
result
an
he displayed at this
insufficient regraining.99 As for Redon,
stage
and
one,
and
for the
chemically
tionally
from
the
part
responsible
nize
support
incipient
about
the passage
of Druidess
impression
his
Druidess
to this earlier
apply
turned
(Fig. 32) with Parsifal I (Fig. 3) can be illuminating.98
down
This
the
I made
observations
I to Druidess
Parsifal
a
particularly
light
he
yet unknown,
transformed
and
reinterpret
reorga
for instance,
inverting,
the
the negative
relation
space
by
turning
figure-ground
between
the mountains
into the positive
of Parsifal's
shape
bust.
and
He
also
spear,
autographic
the stone,
this
is, at
eyebrows,
to extend
what
it in this new
pillar
supporting
rather
ted, was
space
obtained
the horizontal
order
of
he
paper:
that
sense
more
needed
and
completely,
is what
context,
a vague
for
Redon
result,
this may
be
itmust
one
of
be
the
admit
reasons
to edition Parsifal I. Another
someone
it into a vertical
turned
The
lintel.
not
that
adding
rather
explains,
head
figure's
new
of
piece
than a flaw in
at the level of Parsifal's
running
of
the
initial
In
top
composition.100
had been
the Druidess's
veil and make
awkward,
be
a
line
why the artist decided
could
the new
the
and
reason
for
it by
aware
of
this genesis,
the
UNFOLDING
Druidess
and
Parsifal
remained
enmeshed
in
together
A LITHOGRAPHIC
BY ODII.ON
METAMORPHOSIS
REDON
735
this
image, a bit like themale Parsifal I and the female Parsifal II
at
the
his
In any case, Redon's
of Syberberg's
film.101
to
amounted
them: he retraced
separating
the Druidess
redrew
her features,
and
figure,
beginning
solution
eventual
steps
toward
eliminated
most
the
elements
Then
plant
he drew
under
an
altogether
from
the unsatisfactory
in the process
of metamorphosis.
one
vious
dered
but
Synthesis
a schematic
have
that we
phenomenon,
"accidental,"
requires
Mellerio,
Redon
at
look
of psychoanalysis.
process
by
German
use
that
cesses
to Eduard
von
as
the
sensation
voluntary
in 1877.103
was
production
described
artists,
mystics,
creative
"is also
the
mysterious
in quota
the
Hartmann,
on
based
with
together
con
Hartmann
to be
it derived
thought
the substance
of
forming
and
1869 Philosophie des Unbewussten
artistic
and
lordly
unconscious"
"psychological
mental
life and
lute unconscious"
his
and
"unconscious"
into French
translated
the
its
char
development
term
the
refers
probably
been
conscious
and
of
philosopher whose
sidered
held
that
this
of
letter of 1898 to
the
'unconscious,'
of
himself
of
description
la
imagination,
fantaisie,
that
His
personage."102
tion marks
by Redon
and early
In his already quoted
adding
of the
messenger
introduced
the prehistory
concluded
engen
view
complete
to the
question
or "unconscious"
"intentional,"
term was
last
a brief
but
to return
it is possible
relatively
acter.
The
features
freed
"Unconscious"
Now
had
and
also
the landscape
concealing
a
dark
uniformly
background.
new Parsifal,
on
based
the pre
additions,
the origin
of
from an "abso
the universe.
He
unconscious
martyrs,
for a
and
it is un
likely that he would already have heard of Sigmund Freud's
of the unconscious.
analysis
numerous
to be fortuitous
concerns.
to
rable
that
accorded
Parsifal,
distinguished
tent of dreams,
and
from
he
the manifest
to the
back
The
layers of the psyche.
turned
into a therapeutic
don's
of
understanding
fostering
Freud
the
had
free
the
to
tion
cryptography
their author
elements
puzzles.
request.106
revealing
was unaware.
could
"unconscious
ture
automatic
analyze
at his
be
gave
comparison
to go
of
deepest
which
he
ideas,
similarities
process,
with
Re
toward
geared
"unconscious."105
in the visual,
some
and
to
science
of his
In
images.
of dream
interpreta
a French
produced
by
drawings
as a
He
these
scribbles
regarded
a content
in coded
form
of which
found
the
has
psychological
the
technique
Vexierbilder,99
He
also
interest
the new
disciples
applied
Pfister used
1913, Oskar
painter
too
with
psychoanalysis
to "unveil"
the
latent,
creative
the
a
of
association
tool,
of
"coming"
an intense
used
repeatedly
the effort
to describe
archaeology
are
however,
parallels,
sources
to common
and point
and
an
gave
compa
sexuality
importance
in his works,
by Wagner
including
a manifest
a latent con
and
between
who
Freud,
The
Pfister
further
in works
of
argued
art and
the German
using
of a vulture
example
that
similar
them
called
name
that,
for
pic
inspired
by Freud's Leonardo da Vinci and aMemory ofHis Childhood, he
had discovered in the draperies of The Virgin and Child with
Saint
Anne
and
Saint John
the
Baptist
in the Louvre
(former
collection),
Bonger
oil on
1896,
Gogh Museum,
S 467 N/1996
X
10%
cardboard,
Amsterdam
in the
(artwork
public domain)
a
Redon
but
Bernheim,
Hippolyte
a
Head
Redon,
of Woman,
in. (27.7 X 25.5 cm). Van
prophets,
"fusion
of
principal
repositories
and
hallucination."104
involuntary
Charcot
10
pro
must also have been aware of the highly publicized work of
Jean-Martin
28
after
giving
to a
turn
90-degree
"vulture"
derived
is of
observation
of it (Fig. 33).107
Since
the
reproduction
from a faulty translation
used
this
Freud,
by
to Leonardo,
little relevance
but
it demon
a
strates
applied
devinettes
and
oriented
by
mentioned
Freud
analysis.
duced
to
approach
was
schooled
turn-of-the-century
to D?rer?that
by Jarry
the
"unveiling"
impulse
Pfister's
"discovery"
study,
the
ing,
resulted
position
in the
dream
densed
"dream
work"
is the
tung)
of
two
being
I
Parsifal
"109
most
By far the
in the same
devised
Among
to Freud,
by
on
her
paint
mother's
"condensation"
the Druidess
influential
repro
lap
con
like badly
together
the operations
of
the
the making
could
be
said
years
psycho
in the Louvre
that
seated
of
equivalent
c
figures.
added
"merged
figures."108
Parsifal and
together
i
dream
he
the Virgin
according
and
images,
in which
of
and
in the 1919 edition of his
its explanatory drawing
Leonardo
images?already
by the images
(Verdich
or
of double
by
analogy
multiple
to merge
"like badly condensed
use
analytic
the psychiatrist
of
images
Hermann
was
Ror
schach, a friend of Pfister, and made public in 1921.110 The
and cultural origins of the Rorschach test still
biographical
need
but an interesting
explored,
point
in part
from divination
techniques,
for us
to be
derived
is that
games,
parlor
in southern
Germany
and
spiritualistic
experiments
popular
Switzerland
since
the mid-nineteenth
German-speaking
to put the
What
Rorschach
did was
interpretation
century.111
a tool that had
tran
of blots,
been
used
for both
ludic and
and
scendent
analysis
communication,
of perception.
in
It would
the
service
take
too
of
a
long
psychological
to show how
it
ART
786
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2007 VOLUME
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NUMBER
29
Redon,
Druidess,
detail,
1891,
on mounted
lithograph
ivory China
9j/h X 8 in. (23.1 X 20.2 cm).
paper,
Art
The
Institute
Collection,
Stickney
in the
work
public
graph
provided
of Chicago)
the
widespread
recourse
artistic
to
was
chance
around
A
1900.112 By "scribbling over" the sheet of paper to give it life
and
Redon
iconic
and
of
Druidess
almost
since
the
show
that
a surface
a
as
materials
to
technique
if
were
they
his
produce
like
I
a
semantic
that
the
the
image,
as
into Parsifal
it functioned
for projection.
was
to
did
"fictions."
a Rorschach
the Druidess
involved
like a mine
transform
to
I, amounted
or
scribbling
affinities
between
former
he
in
Rorschach's
oracles,
the direction of the support and disregarding
function
putative
work
such
developed
Changing
fal
the artistic
approaching
the
the
his
treating
test?almost,
and
Parsi
as
(turned
Gustav
who
Jung,
domain;
by the Art
of Freud
rival)
psychological
typology.
who
the
(art
photo
Institute
must
be men
the model
for
provided
a child
As
in the mid
1880s, Jung had filled a whole notebook with ink blots and
their
"fantastic
His
later work,
interpretation."113
would
in a universal
mus?e
find
anthropology,
a
to the "collective
unconscious."
This
imaginaire
pathway
to Hartmann
to Redon's
notion
relates
and may
be closer
enjoyed
on
bordering
of
understanding
its
metamorphosis
as much
for extraction
last disciple
tioned
is Carl
of Chicago,
1920.1697
conception.
the role of
universal,
the
notoriously
in the
sexuality
broke
Jung
primordial
than
unconscious
vital
libido,
energy.
with
which
He
also
Freud's
his mentor
he
saw
reproached
pansexual
around
as
a more
Freud
UNFOLDING
A LITHOGRAPHIC
BY ODII.ON
METAMORPHOSIS
REDON
7g7
30
Redon,
[I], detail,
pre
Parsifal
in the
sented upside
down
(artwork
domain;
public
photograph
provided
by the Art Institute of Chicago)
with
"blind
being
ter of the
contents
to the
paradoxical
of the unconscious,
that everything
emerging
inside and an outside."114
from
In his
it has
1912
and
of
a
thing
symbols
on
statues
is hidden
masculine
The
book
into
and
connecting
a
"feminine
individual
an
Metamorphoses
of
the presence
nature"
later developed
anima,
in
the
two
"archetypes"
of
unconscious
in the unconscious
consciousness
this
with
the
dynamic
tendency
for example,
anima
turned
preted,
of man
collective
displeasure.117
The
resemblance
I / Druidess
Parsifal
out
of
much
male
to
to
attributed
Jung
to become
Wotan's
by the fact that "some
goddesses
woman
as
within
just
something
the concepts
of animus
and
a "masculine
nature"
personifying
woman
and
unconscious.116
fact
of
feminine is hidden within man."115 He
idea
the
ignorant
a bottom,
top and
and Symbols of theLibido, Jung explained
phallic
charac
ambiguous
the Druidess
like
individual
independent,
between
these
ideas
of
he
inter
as
Br?nnhilde
to her
father's
the Druidess
and
I /
transformation
and
is striking: Parsifal
emerged
out
of Parsifal
the Druidess
very
and
their
of
have
we
attribute
or
and
figure
much
a
"others"
hidden
autonomous,
Wagner's
crystallizations
But
"unconscious."
finally
these
male
respectively
from
chance
gone
this metamorphosis
collective?
It is well
to "the
known
to
fe
design
unconscious,"
that
Freud,
after
ART BULLETIN
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4
NUMBER
P*#**'
*%?*f?'
m:4"
<"%%
of details
Combination
31
from
Redon, Parsifal [I] (1975.493) in
purple and Druidess (1920.1697) in
orange,
slightly shifted, composite
the Art
Patzke,
by Karin
photograph
Institute of Chicago
(photograph
by the Art Institute of
provided
*}& /.
Chicago)
and
writers
envying
"endogenic"
came
to
artists
knowledge
them as neurotics
issue
of
the
degree
symptoms.118
was
relevance
of great
creative
process
reasons
to fear the
good
psychopathological
and
from convention
artistic
departures
the more
as his
subject
matter
even
included
of
their
progressively
their works
over
control
to Redon,
who
as
the
had
explanations
common
sense,
dreams,
of
all
hallucina
critic
the
Morice
to
Goya, inwhich the caption to the first plate (Fig. 20) started
with
"In my
dream,"
Morice
wrote:
"M.
Redon's
dream
to the word Dream
to be
clear! The meaning
given
one
in sleep),
visions
the popular
(inevitable
prosaic
one
nor
it is
visions
when
the rare poetic
awake);
(voluntary
of
it is strictly the dream
and dreaming,
both of them, awake
a dream:
of
inevitable
the voluntary
visions."119
arrangement
we can envision
of Parsifal
the creation
this model,
Using
as a dialectical
both
chance
and Druidess
process
involving
Accidental
and
"the unconscious."
consciousness
and design,
have
factors must
and unconscious
subconscious)
(or rather
Let
us be
is not
Charles
1885,
young
insanity.
set the record
in a way that
pleased
straight
especially
on the
album Homage
the artist. Commenting
lithographic
tions,
and
In
as
regarded
psyche,
to treat
and
regard
The
he
for what
the human
of
. . .
played
ration
the greatest
of Druidess
into
Parsifal
hand
while
part
I and
I, whereas
giving
shape
at
the beginning,
especially
conscious
to Druidess
during
control
and
the elabo
during
its transformation
took
above
the
upper
all Parsifal
II.
A LITHOGRAPHIC
UNFOLDING
METAMORPHOSIS
BY ODILON
REDON
789
32 Redon, Druidess, 1891 (1920.1697),
presented
down
upside
in the
(artwork
public domain; photograph provided by
the Art
Institute
of Chicago)
Among
the agents
artist,
the materials,
of
we must
this process,
and
count
the printer,
possibly
not
but
to call the
the British anthropologist Alfred Gell proposed
that
"prototype,"
art]
represents
declaration
idess
and
is, "the
entity
This
visually."120
to Mellerio
and
Parsifal
which
the
is not
only the
also what
index
[the work
to contradict
an
postulate
existence
as
of
of Dru
belong
superior
that for Redon,
seen,
though,
connected
with
the ideal
image
as
a
and
function.
social
person
Redon's
identity
be described
equally
This
is
sentation.
closely
10,
is therefore
as one
resembling
of the artist's
Fakir,"
description
complex
thus went
of
the
clearly
other
artistic
11). One
through
fitting Parsifal's
with Druidess,
who
access
and mediate
realm
alter
the
as
for
of
Wagner,
the artist
to it.We
looks
"gentle
features.
the active
their
"preliminary
concepts"
prior
but to emphasize
that the dynamic
incarnation,
lithographic
as well
as the outcome
are
nucleus
of these
images
figures,
or
of the un
The
presences,
quasi-persons.
personification
as a
conscious
and mysterious
in Redon's
"lordly
personage"
text testifies
to this. Like
the
Druidess
and
Parsifal
him,
to a
and what
by her gender
This
apparent
profile."
paradox
mentioned:
symmetry
already
heroic
Redon's
to
him
have
are also
they
as an individual
As
sides
of
so
stake,
this process
can
and
self-searching
case
with
Parsifal,
projections
in his
egos
crowd
progress.121
shares with
self-repre
an
image
of Redon
(Figs.
"the
early writings,
a
a
sleepwalker,"
is more
The matter
"like
Parsifal
traits
such
the bond with nature and the prophetic giftbut isopposed
as
to
the
In
longed.123
complementary
same
coin.
this
sense,
and
can
While
two
an
and
creating
Parsifal
of
his
aspects
personality
that was
neither
identity
nourished
Wagner's
from
Sch?re
Parsifal
bears
priestess
had stressed
genders.
choice
Tannh?user,
tively.124The
the Druidess
also,
be
of
legend
a work
exploring
them
through
stable
but was
and
negotiating
nor
individual
and
representations
collective
dimension
and
his
had underlined
that
must
Redon
French poet defended
oscillated
be
to
corresponds
as
myth
two
was
Redon
Druidess,
and
to represent
said
collective
The
which Charles Baudelaire
on
and
foolish
he
he
are
the Celtic
"crude
inverted
and
the "virile will"
Parsifal
while
her
to the
of women
Gauls.122
among
high
standing
a model
women
had
found
in Basque
for
the
social
and
sexual
Other
that attracted
him,
role
for whom
corresponds
the chaste
and
suffering,"
Both Chateaubriand
for Redon,
tween
at
and
called
Huysmans
subject
matter,
in his 1861 essay
have
read
atten
this choice with the
in
brain
"the history of an individual
represents
on
and
he
the history of the universal
brain,"
gave
a
that occasion
of his dualism:
striking
"Every
expression
well-formed
brain
carries
within
itself two infinites,
heaven
assertion
that
miniature
and
hell,
and
in every
image
of
one
of
these
infinites
it
ART BULLETIN
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DECEMBER
LXXXIX
2007 VOLUME
NUMBER
4
i
su: t?-:M PSYCHO
33 Oskar
The
from
Pfister, schematic
drawing
Virgin and Child with Saint Anne
"Kryptolalie,
Kryptographie,"
und psychopathologische
Forschungen
after Leonardo
and
Jahrbuch
34 H.
da Vinci,
the Baptist,
Saint John
Abraham,
fur psychoanalytische
on
Baudelaire's
remark
brain
to the bio
refers
spell.126
as
such
a back
philosophical
conceptions
connected
the process
of
metamorpho
of metempsychosis,
which
he knew
from
he may
ground,
sis to the notion
have
his
long familiarity with Indian texts and which Wagner had
introduced in Parsifal by way of Kundry, who is hailed by
as
Klingsor
dryggia.127
tany made
that
a
We
"doctrine
the
realm
shapes
We
within
looks
it as
feel
of
of 1896
equivalent
to his
essential
have
somewhat
the process
softer,
of
gentler?in
that extent
sifal I. To
formal
clarity,
it does
as
if he
that of
a
an
that
the
as
34)
certain
country
there
exposed
already,
II
Parsifal
Its
metamorphosis.
short, more
as
represent
Brit
and
saw
by Sch?re,
of souls."128
reinterpretation
to Redon's
art.
and
neglected
as well
Gun
and
"transmigration
in the
Symbolist
that a caricaturist
shows
the
trade
not
a
concept
popular
(Fig.
of
and
the Basque
had
lived
the Druids,"
as
was
Metempsychosis
and a cartoon
of Herodias
seen
have
Redon
the human
see
reincarnation
in Le Rire, December
published
Zimmerli
Art
by the Jane Voorhees
The
of New Jersey, New
State University
provided
Museum,
law?later
the German
naturalist
genetic
by
popularized
to which
Ernst
Haeckel?according
"ontogenesis
recapitu
lates
who
been
had
fascinated
from
Redon,
phylogenesis";
his youth
transformism
and
also
fell
under
evolutionism,
by
With
Forst, Metempsychosis,
5, 1896 (artwork in the public domain; photograph by Jack
Rutgers,
Brunswick)
half of itself."125
recognizes
suddenly
the "individual"
and
the "universal"
its
C.
s l.
and
image
"feminine"
of
era,
could
graphic
its position
the hero
of
than
in Par
its compositional
and
a return
to a statu quo ante
for
but
a further
as
ones,
of
expression
masculine
means
step
if Redon
of
elements
integrating
had
been,
like
the Menschliches,
Wagner,
the properly
can
steps
nor
feminine.
the
thesis-antithesis-synthesis
These
from
the preceding
for an
searching
neither
human,
be
described
formula
by
associated
with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, which had been devel
oped by Immanuel Kant and Johann Gottlieb Fichte and had
already
bet's
French
impacted
art before
1860,
with
Gustave
Cour
re
syst?me
peintures
(system
Having
paintings).129
to those of
for the visual
arts ambitions
comparable
aware
literature
and
Redon
could well have been
philosophy,
of the virtues
of this dialectical
In his operas,
tool.130
Wagner
a
as
had
realized
of various
in
and
synthesis
myths,
Parsifal,
Claude
L?vi-Strauss
he
defined
the
Grail
out,
pointed
king
?
claimed
dom
and
Klingsor's
rically opposed
the
domain
as
two simultaneous
aspects.131 Sch?re
concluded
and
diamet
his 1891 essay
of Ancient
science
and
synthesis
that
the
of
spirituality,"
insisting
victory
Christianity
had not represented
the destruction
but a rejuvenation
of the
Druidic
The
notion
of synthesis was also
in
topical
religion.132
Redon's
artistic
circle
around
since Paul
and
1890,
Gauguin
were
a new "ism"
Emile
Bernard
it to define
using
particularly
to his own
of
relevant
critique
Impressionism.
of this
is not, however,
The
that Redon
point
comparison
by evoking
Christian
may
have
had
"harmonious
the
thesis-antithesis-synthesis
formula
in mind
A LITHOGRAPHIC
UNFOLDING
while working on Parsifal and Druidess. It is that the process I
have
been
model,
analyzing
by
or
refuting
when
them.
Hegel
relations
the
this
them without
(Werden), he
becoming in his Science ofLogic}2,2,Becoming
means
into
both
wrote,
being (Entstehen)and passing
coming
over (Vergehen), and it consists of both being and nothing,
each
the
includes
of which
as
other
a necessary
reference.
is contradictory";
that sinks
restlessness
transformation?or
it can
and
what
be
as
"an unstable
defined
into a motionless
down
to
metamorphosis,
the
emphasize
a
note
terminological
to
it.What
that aufheben,which he defined dramatically as "one of the
most
important
common
of
concepts
two
language
the
that of preserving
meanings,
opposite
in
possesses
philosophy,"
something and that of putting an end to something. He
proposed to reconcile the two by observing that what has
been put an end to is still a result of what used to be and is
of
at the
wonder
by it.135 Hegel's
us of
can remind
Jung's
determined
aufheben
to the
ness"
the unconscious.
Freud
But
the
of
in fact,
himself,
of
expressions
had been
the most
to which
ancient
were
languages
fasci
devoid
of the principle of contradiction and contained words with
two
words
meanings,
opposed
and
combining
in the order
reversals
meanings,
posed
saw this absence
Freud
the
of
principle
with
elements
the
confirmed
phonemes.136
of contradiction
in dreams."
pressed
nature
archaic
"regressive,
on
Hegel,
for
self-reflexive
than
aufgehoben
nated
and
yet
possesses
a
usage
of
is aufgehoben
in a different
form.
is, termi
Redon's
ap
proach to images confronted him with the problem posed to
Hegel by "becoming." The technique of lithography, by pre
serving
images
new
them with
in the
"memory"
that may
images
of
stone
the
turn out
while
replacing
to perpetuate
them
form, provided him with a tool comparable to
the word aufheben for the philosopher. This may have been
inmodified
one
of
dium
the
and
reasons
made
why
it such
Redon
an
important
to this me
attached
became
part
of his
becoming
lead on
as
a
praxis of process differs from Hegel's
in
that
it does
to a "motionless
"synthesis,"
the
not?or
result."
oscillation
does
While
only
Parsifal
between
theory of
temporarily?
II can be seen
the Druidess
earlier
reinterpretations
in an ongoing debate, towhich artists
own means,
as
art
art
twentieth-century
students
of
who
developed
have
to all
But
as well.
contributed
to
is familiar
process
and
art.
and
the role
knowledge,
to be
still needs
advent
period
interminable
the
students
of
and
twenty-first
not breed
does
familiarity
in its
late nineteenth
century
twentieth-
this
of
the
Other
assessed.
artists
major
the
of
to the one
comparable
practices
dem
onstrated by Redon include Edgar Degas, who worked in
layers and occasionally changed the direction of his supports,
and Auguste
Rodin,
own
statues
to
his
Balzac
of
who
new
produce
been
able
have
its complex
to casts
resorted
of
photographs
of Ro
Historians
and
works.139
to summarize
genesis
to process
into
reconstruc
their
a veritable
and
tree,
family
over
is wonderfully
product
As the
told by Ambroise
Vollard.140
to find a small dancer,
he
which
Degas's
preference
in an anecdote
expressed
dealer
seemed
disappointed
to
cast in bronze
hoped
finally
after
transforma
its twentieth
tion, turned back to the state of wax ball, the artist told him:
'You think above all ofwhat itwas worth, Vollard, but had you
given me a hat full of diamonds, itwould not have given me
the same pleasure
starting
been
again."141
shows
and
the
interest
and
tributed
from
ual
to conceive
developed
Alfred
Gell
he
suggested
object"
dispersed
a
"career-long
are
works
stages
of
this
by
made
a
Many
for
from
generate-and-test
or
in this
stops
These
Husserl,
have
sequence."143
"cumulative
instance,
ear
various
proposal
of Redon,
methods
of
group
notions
oeuvre
the artist's
seeing
in space
and
time and
discovery,"
mutually
future-oriented
relations)
is
or
extension,
another
the model
of
work
the Surrealists
connected
ones).
past-oriented
of time of Edmund
one
a whole.
to the
working
in relation
Rodin:
as
this for the sake of
extension
from
metamorphosis
oeuvre
artist's
sources.142
is an
that at stake
story
proposed
lier
I had in demolishing
of special
Degas,
a "dis
as
resulting
Individ
of
process
or
by protentions
(prospective
retentions
(retrospective
and
terms
derive
from
who
wrote
that
which
continuous
modification,
intrinsically
carries
in itself?a
the
of its past
heritage
for
Druidess
II
and
suit,
Parsifal
example,
remark
as
or
the philosophy
retention
"each
is
that
to
say
could
"retentions"
(in
various ways) of both Druidess I and Parsifal I144 Gell himself
sketched an application of his model to the work of Marcel
oeuvre.
Extensions
Redon's
on
shortly
expressed
that the recep
Merleau-Ponty,
and
their
of
combinatorics,
an
representing
in it, that
the fruit
preserved
go
with
century
of process
to
works
idea isjam, which is
aufhebenoften cited to illuminate Hegel's
because
and
Maurice
follows,
notion
This
words
by
nihilo but participated
ex
the Druidess/
that
similarly
"thinking,"
of the common
example
An
quality.
believe
rather
metamorphosis,
Parsifal/Druidess
visual
instance
of "regressive"
thought
it "encour
found
language
themselves"
in
as
that it
of
the contrary,
to find
in the
thought
aging
speculative
a
that possess
meaning
speculative
the "sensible
either/or."1371
beyond
op
of
a distinctive trait of primitive thinking and believed
death
developments
is the idea,
this
an
made
repeatedly
to bear
it is legitimately
open change it only into itself."138
is that Freud or Jung did not invent their theories ex
Another
tion
"blind
nated by an essay written in 1884 by the linguist Karl Abel,
according
to which
din's
meaning"
of Freud's
critique
ambivalence
fundamental
"double
for
a con
It may
evolution.
I
essay
79I
as
"wandering"
never-ending
this
later
of
justification
his
The
was
him
intrigued
in
of
REDON
tion of works of art unfolds their potential and that "it is the
work itself that has opened the field fromwhich itappears in
another light, it is the work that metamorphoses
itselfand
anal
ogy with our object?was
expressed by Hegel with the verb
he found relevant enough to
which
sub?ate),
(to
aufheben
devote
One
like Redon,
This
result."134
use
becomes what
Becoming "is the passing over of being into nothing, and of
nothing into being"; it "contradicts itself,because it unites
and
self-opposition
noted
that
"anachronistic"
notion
Beuys's
been
before
and
nothing,
being,
to
is closer
tinuous
ones.
a model
such
Parsifal
have
op
mutually
adopted
between
to
analogous
figures)
and by going beyond
annihilating
discussing
(here
categories
creating
and dependent,
posed
in a way
unfolded
BY ODILON
METAMORPHOSIS
and
Duchamp,
while
recognizing
that
his
claim
to a universal
value could be diminished by the historical proximity be
tween Duchamp's
intellectual milieu and the "[William]
James-Bergson-Husserl
conception
of consciousness.'"145
'stream
This
of
flux
temporal
objection
to
or
universality
the
ART BULLETIN
792
not
need
prime
of
It takes
art,
one
step
or
images
tion,"
the contrary,
link between
the direct
as
LXXXIX
and
process
NUMBER
4
is a
Duchamp
been
more
to conceive
as
artifacts,
made
with
one
of
endless
as
notions
and
"intericonicity,"
the whole
as
diverse
Dario
world
and
process,
"sampling."
in the sense made
last expression
of sounds
Dario
this
"appropria
Robleto
(b.
popular
and musical
the disc
by
fragments,
jockeys'
a
created
recently
the
of a
female
rib. The
powder
pulverized
this gender
reversal
and
sexual
metamorphosis,
erate
of the
could
be
aspect
procedure
hardly
from
explicitness
the delib
of
from
Redon.
But
the
man
and
older
which
woman,
artist
the
re
further
have
might
of a genetic
account
thought of the biblical
between
also
relationship
transformation
of Dru
idess I into Parsifal I already turned upside down, and it is
notable
should
same
the
in Robleto's
that
element
be
Another
of
symptom
of cultural
a
tool
the
too,
work,
the
production,
its
analysis,
for
called
of
substance
and
aufgehoben?annihilated
the new one.
time?in
standing
at
being
the first
at
preserved
under
increasingly
processual
which
aims at the same
time
is the
to
approach
literature
critiqueg?n?tique (genetic criticism), which shifts the
object of interpretation from the "final" text, known from
authorized
such
to
editions,
forms
of
the
in
documented
process
writing
as writers'
avant-texte
notes,
sketches,
drafts,
and
Since
typescripts,
proofs,
correspondence.147
art
to "avant-im
has
attention
beginnings,
given
history
as notes,
and models,
sketches,
studies,
ages" such
maquettes,
manuscripts,
its
but
the distinction
them
between
to be
tends
because
Prints,
this
"public"
a more
of
in
literature
the
regard,
of
the
works
and what
and
complex
us
enables
precedes
affair.148
shifting
come
process,
editioning
which
asking towhat extent Redon
aware
to
closest
to conclude
by
intended the public to become
Druidess/Parsifal
metamorphosis.
Druidess and Parsifal II were published and thus made
public, but as individual prints, and the recognition of their
was
relationship
left
to the
spectators'
perceptiveness.
They
could find clues in the formal echoes between the two litho
graphs,
sense
of
in the
the
semantic
associations
of
formed
"intericonicity"
their
titles,
in a
and
oeuvre
by Redon's
and,
within it, by the category of the Pi?ces modernes. This may
sound
like
mans's
and
early
a
great deal
asking
comment
shows
Redon
had
very
from
one's
that he was
attentive
and
viewers,
on
the
imaginative
but
Huys
right
track,
beholders.
Parsifal I, on the other hand, and within it the (faint) traces
of Druidess
I, remained
and
unpublished
probably
unseen?
except by the printer?during Redon's lifetime; neither did
the artist mention its existence to Mellerio, who did not
include a reference to it in his 1913 catalog. However, Redon
kept
at
least
three
proofs
of
it, which,
after
his
death,
duly
found theirway into the hands of his collectors. By 1891, Jules
Destr?e had already demonstrated to Redon how meticulous
his
admirers
he
knew
to
transmission
posterity
of a small
could
the value
be,
and
his
they attached
short, by preserving
commercial
to the rare
strategy
shows
impression.149
II,
that
In
the trial proofs of Parsifal I, Redon
at
previously
taught
Reserve
and
University,
who
Gamboni,
Case
but
precious
Western
the
University
the
University
ofLyon
of Am
sterdam, has been professor of art history at the University of
Geneva since 2004. He has published numerous books and arti
on nineteenth-
cles, mainly
ment
work entitled Men Are theNew Women (2002, collection of
Linda Pace, San Antonio), consisting of a male rib molded
moved
the
late-nineteenth-century
1972), a young artist from theUnited States who employs the
recycling
ensured
mystery.
twentieth-century
and artistic developments.146
but
has
step
2007 VOLUME
on
here;
the oeuvre
of
philosophical
of
us
detain
example
notions
DECEMBER
d'histoire
4, Switz.,
de Tart,
and
Universit?
art
twentieth-century
de Gen?ve,
CH-1211
[D?parte
Geneva
dario.gamboni@lettres.unige.ch].
Notes
First versions of this essay were presented orally before the Institut National
Genevois on September 14, 2005, and as a contribution to the 2005 annual
conference of the Swiss Association of Art Historians
"Inversions et transgres
sions : 'Inversions' de genre dans les pratiques artistiques" in Lausanne;
I
thank Pierre Vaisse and Daniela Mondini
for the invitations. My interpreta
tion owes important information and suggestions to the following
colleagues:
Mayte Garcia-Julliard, Ted Gott, Antje von Graevenitz, Christophe Imperiali,
Paul Lang, Fred Leeman, and Rainer Michael Mason. A special debt is due to
of Prints and
Douglas Druick, Peter Zegers, and the staff of the Department
Drawings of the Art Institute of Chicago, particularly Suzanne Folds McCul
lagh, Harriet Stratis, Kristi Dahm, and Karin Patzke, who realized the enlarge
ments and the composite image of details of Parsifal and Druidess
reproduced
in the article: itwas a rare treat to be able to involve all of them in the detailed
discussion of my argument in front of Redon's prints in September 2006.1 am
also grateful to the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries of the Art Institute of
Chicago for access to the Andr? Mellerio Papers. Finally, my text has bene
fited fromMarc Gotlieb's encouragements
and from the insightful remarks of
the two anonymous reviewers of the manuscript. All translations are mine,
unless otherwise indicated.
1. Jules Destr?e, L'oeuvre lithographique de Odilon Redon, catalogue
descriptif
(Brussels: Edmond Deman,
1891), 72. See Adrienne Fontainas and
Luc Fontainas, Edmond Deman ?diteur (1857-1918): Art et ?dition au
tournant du si?cle (Brussels: Labor, 1997), 138-41.
2. Odilon Redon, Lettres d'Odilon Redon 1878-1916
(Paris: Librairie Na
tionale d'Art et d'Histoire; Brussels: G. van Oest, 1923), 32.
3. See an interpretation of this relationship in Dario Gamboni, La plume
et lepinceau: Odilon Redon et la litt?rature (Paris: Minuit, 1989), 129.
to Odilon Redon, October
4. Joris-Karl Huysmans
11, 1891, in Roseline
Bacou, ed., Lettres de Gauguin, Gide, Huysmans, Jammes,Mallarm?, Ver
haeren . . . ? Odilon Redon (Paris: Corti, 1960), 125: "Ah !mais elles
sont du parfait Redon, l'une, si ?trange et douce et dolente avec sa
fl?che, l'autre si terriblement bestiale avec son profil fruste, son oeil
verni." Huysmans had simply dated his letter "Sunday morning," to
which Redon added "October 11, 1891."
5. Andr? Mellerio, Odilon Redon (1913; reprint, New York: Da Capo
Press, 1968), 110, nos. 116-18. Further references to this catalog will
be to "M," followed by the catalog number. A proof of Druidess in
to Huysmans and belonging to
scribed with a manuscript dedication
the collection of Dr. Frederick Mulder
is reproduced
in London
in
Ted Gott, The Enchanted Stone: The Graphic Worlds ofOdilon Redon, exh.
cat., National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne,
1990, 110, no. 52.
6. Suzanne Folds McCullagh
and Inge Christine Swenson, "A New 'Parsi
fal' by Odilon Redon," Print Collector's Quarterly 7, no. 3 (October
toMellerio, fifty copies of Parsifal (M 116)
1976): 108-9. According
and Druidess (M 117) each were printed by Becquet on chine applique
and the stones were canceled;
the copies were uneven for Parsifal,
and Swenson knew of two proofs of the
good for Druidess. McCullagh
first version of Parsifal: one in the collection of the Hirshhorn Mu
seum and Sculpture Garden,
(66.4197), to which it
Washington, D.C.
had been given in 1966 by Joseph H. Hirshhorn;
the other, donated
to the Art Institute of Chicago by Robert Light (1975.493), had been
purchased by him at the June 11, 1975, auction of Kornfeld and Klip
stein in Bern (lot 838; R. M. Light, e-mail to the author, January 4,
2007). This second proof came from the collection of the Swiss Rich
ard B?hler by way of his daughter-in-law Hanne B?hler
(Eberhard W.
Kornfeld, letter to the author, January 9, 2007); Redon's widow, Ca
mille Redon, had sent to Richard B?hler in 1918 a series of litho
(Camille
graphs, including the last proof of Parsifal in her possession
Redon toMrs. B?hler, January 18, 1918, private collection). A third
impression, once mistaken for a charcoal drawing (Odilon Redon
1840-1916, exh. cat., Galerie des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux,
1985, 92,
no. 41 ), has reappeared
since in another private collection; itwas ac
UNFOLDING
quired from Camille Redon in 1919 by the Swiss art historian Hans R.
son of the collector Arthur Hahnloser
Hahnloser,
(Margit Hahnloser
Ingold, telephone call to the author, January 8, 2007). It had been
cropped on all sides except the left one, probably by Redon himself,
in Richard Wagner, visions d'artistes:DAuguste
and iswell reproduced
Renoir ? Anselm Kiefer, exh. cat., Mus?es d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva
(Paris: Somogy, 2005), 109. See also Gott, The Enchanted Stone, 96.
7. Redon to Edmond Picard, August 25, 1894, quoted inMellerio,
Odilon Redon, 80; for biographical
information, see Douglas W. Druick
et al., Odilon Redon: Prince ofDreams, 1840-1916, exh. cat., Art Insti
tute of Chicago
(New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994), 34ff.
8. See Bacou, Lettres . . . ? Odilon Redon, 88-89; Odilon Redon, A soi
m?me: fournal (1867-1915); Notes sur la vie, l'art et les artistes (1922;
Paris: Corti, 1961), 177 (1878).
9. Redon,
?
soi-m?me, 156 (November
Ryerson and Burnham
et le Salon de
de Wyzewa, "Notes sur la peinture wagn?rienne
1886," Revue Wagn?rienne 2 (May 8, 1886): 100-113, at 106.
12. Gott, The Enchanted Stone, 97, no. 41.
11. Teodor
130; see Gott, The Enchanted Stone, 97-98, no. 42; and Alec
Odilon Redon: Catalogue raisonn? de l'oeuvrepeint et dessin?,
Wildenstein,
4 vols. (Paris: Wildenstein
Institute, 1992-98), vol. 2, no. 1043 (fur
ther references to this catalog will take the form ofW followed by the
13. Mellerio
catalog number).
14. See Gamboni,
15. W
La plume et lepinceau, 26-30,
92-95,
146-50.
626.
16. See Redon,
A soi-m?me,27, 128.
17. AMP,
Chronology," 49.
et al., Odilon Redon: Prince ofDreams, 41.
19. See
Parsifal: Dichtung, Entwurf, Schriften (1914; Wal
21. See, for example, Paul Lindau, Bayreuther Briefe vom reinen Thoren: "Par
1883), 11-12.
sifal" von Richard Wagner (Breslau: Schottlaender,
"'Le dieu Richard Wagner
irradiant un
22. See Jean-Fran?ois Candoni,
sacre': ? propos de la religion de l'art dans Parsifal," in "Parsifal," ed.
Christian Merlin, special issue, L'Avant-sc?ne Op?ra 213 (March-April
2003): 123-27; and Richard Wagner,
"Religion und Kunst" (1880), in
S?mtliche Schriftenund Dichtungen, 16 vols. (Leipzig: Breitkopf und H?r
tel, 1911-14), vol. 10, 211-52.
23. See Gamboni, La plume et lepinceau, 19-30, 134-37;
Odilon Redon: Prince ofDreams, 23-24, 71-72, 89-93.
and Druick
et al.,
Das Pass Amontillado: Der Traum eines Traumes
24. See Dario Gamboni,
(Frankfurt: Fischer,
26. See Jean-David Jumeau-Lafond's
entry for thiswork in Richard Wagner,
visions d'artistes, 152, no. 37; and Love Revealed: Simeon Solomon and the
and Art Gallery, 2006.
Pre-Raphaelites, exh. cat., Birmingham Museum
Another interesting element of comparison isJean Delville's androgy
nous and mystical charcoal drawing Parsifal (1890, private collection),
reproduced, for instance, in Richard Wagner, visions d'artistes, 127, no.
23.
Mason's
entry in Richard Wagner, visions d'artistes,
28. Hans
J?rgen Syberberg, Parsifal: Ein Filmessay (Munich: Wilhelm
Heyne, 1982), 69.
"Par la faute d'une chim?re," Le Monde, May
29. Jacques Longchampt,
1982, reprinted inMerlin, "Parsifal," 187.
20,
30. Syberberg, Parsifal, 161.
31.
Ibid., 35.
32. Cosima Wagner, fournal, ed. Martin Gregor-Dellin, vol. 3 (Paris: Galli
mard, 1979), 592-93. A few years earlier, in 1877, Wagner was already
thinking of using "a mixture of voices" to "express the immaterial
; itmust be neither a woman, nor a man, but
spirituality of Christ...
a neutral element in the highest sense of the word" (ibid., entry of
September
33. See Merlin,
35. Druidess, W 609. See also W 627 and W 167, which, however, is enti
tled Woman of theEast in Druick et al., Odilon Redon: Prince ofDreams,
203, fig. 10 (cropped).
36. See
ibid., 62, 328ff.
37. W
266; ibid., cat. no. 71.
38. W
239; ibid., cat. no. 82.
Lettres . . . ? Odilon Redon,
149-59.
40. Edmond Picard, Le jur?: Monodrame en cinq actes (1887; new ed., Brus
and Vve Ferd. Larcier, 1904), act 4, 59: "Elle se
sels: Paul Lacomblez
montre ? lui, dramatique et grandiose, avec sa coiffure de pr?tresse
th??trale, imposante, impr?gn?e de sa vie factice, luxueuse
druidique,
et bruyante, mais sans rien qui soit de la maternit?."
41. Dramatique etgrandiose avec sa figure de pr?tresse druidique . . . W
,
Mellerio 80.
42. Bacou, Lettres . . . ? Odilon Redon, 156: "Dramatique
sa coiffure de pr?tresse druidique.
..."
43. Druick et al., Odilon Redon: Prince ofDreams, 40.
238,
et grandiose,
avec
44. Odilon Redon, "Un s?jour dans le Pays Basque"
(ca. 1869), AMP, A-5,
2: "Le sol basque est pour moi comme une patrie ancienne o? ilme
semble avoir v?cu, souffert, aim?"; and Claire Moran, Odilon Redon:
?crits (London: Modem Humanities Research Association, 2005), 29;
see Druick et al., Odilon Redon: Prince ofDreams, 41-42.
celtique (Paris: Perrin, 1914),
48. Bacou,
"La biblioth?que
11.
d'Odilon
Redon,"
32.
49. Fran?ois-Ren? de Chateaubriand,
Les martyrs, ou Le triomphede la reli
gion chr?tienne (1809; Paris: Garnier, n.d.), 153-75 (bks. 9-10).
50. Edouard
merre,
Sch?re, Vercing?torix:Drame en cinq actes (Paris: Alphonse
iv.
Le
1887),
51. Sch?re, La druidesse, 20; Sch?re referred here to Celtil and (again)
the main characters of La druidesse (1914), an adaptation of
Vell?da,
his own Vercing?torix that enabled him to better reconcile Druidism
and Christianity by setting it in the first century.
is a major point for Sch?re, who found it inAdolphe Pictet, Le
1856).
myst?redes bardes de l'?le de Bretagne (Geneva: Cherbuliez,
53. Sch?re, Vercing?torix, 77-78: "Le Feu, le Feu s'?teint!?Il
n'est plus sur
lumi?re du ciel / S'enfuit . . .j'ai
l'autel, / Il me br?le le c ur!?La
vu l'ab?me! Horreur, n?ant, t?n?bres / Et tr?pas!"
52. This
1988).
25. See Parsifal 1882-1982: Une documentation illustr?eautour du centenaire
de la cr?ation de l'oeuvre de Richard Wagner (Geneva: Grand Th??tre de
Gen?ve, 1982); and Merlin, "Parsifal," 144-59.
27. See Rainer Michael
220-22, no. 71.
793
46. Edouard Sch?re, "Les l?gendes de la Bretagne et le g?nie celtique,"
Revue des Deux Mondes 106 (August 15, 1891): 865-902, at 895.
47. Edouard Sch?re, La druidesse, pr?c?d?e d'une ?tude sur le r?veil de l'?me
ibid., 21ff.
20. See Richard Wagner,
luf: Sandig, 1973).
REDON
45. Ernest Renan, Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse (Paris: Calmann L?vy,
d'Odilon Re
1883), 75, 78, 83. See Roseline Bacou, "La biblioth?que
don," in Festschrift toErik Fischer: European Drawings from Six Centuries
(Copenhagen: Royal Museum of Fine Arts, 1990), 29-37, at 36.
"Mellerio-Redon
18. See Druick
BY ODILON
METAMORPHOSIS
imMenschlichen
Weibliche
[AlsAbschluss von 'Religion und Kunst'],"
in R. Wagner, Dichtungen und Schriften,ed. Dieter Borch-meyer, vol. 10
[Frankfurt: Insel, 1983], 172-74), and he leftunfinished another one
entitled "On the Masculine
and the Feminine in Culture and Art."
39. See Bacou,
1882).
10. Andr? Mellerio Papers (henceforward, AMP),
Libraries, Art Institute of Chicago, A-l, 7.
A LITHOGRAPHIC
26, 1877).
"Parsifal," esp. 17-19, 40.
34. Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Wagner androgyne (Paris: Christian Bourgois,
1990), 197. The question of the male-female
relationship kept preoc
cupying Wagner after Parsifal: shortly before his death in 1883, he
wrote the essay "On the Feminine within the Human"
("?ber das
54. Merlin, "Parsifal," 63, line 307: "Amfortas!? / Die Wunde!?Die
Wunde!?
/ Sie brennt inmeinem Herzen.?
/ O, Klage! Klage!
Furchtbare Klage! / Aus tiefstem Herzen
schreit sie mir auf."
/
55. Edouard Schur?, Le drame musical, vol. 1, La musique et la po?sie dans
leur d?veloppement historique, and vol. 2, Richard Wagner, son oeuvre et son
id?e (Paris: Sandoz et Fischbacher,
1875); Le drame musical, nouvelle
?dition augment?e d'une ?tude sur Parsifal (Paris: Perrin, 1886).
56. Edouard
Schur?, Les grands initi?s:Esquisse de l'histoire secr?tedes reli
gions; Rama?Krishna?Herm?s?Mo?se?Orph?e?Pythagore?Platon?
d'Odilon Re
J?sus (Paris: Perrin, 1889); and Bacou, "La biblioth?que
don," 33.
57. Edouard Schur? to Redon, February 25, 1892, in Bacou, Lettres . . . ?
Odilon Redon, 244; Bacou quotes a very positive, undated note written
by Redon after a discussion with Schur?: "Verymusical, he reminds
me of Boiss? [a friend from Redon's youth]. Youthful soul in an age
less body [Schur? was born in 1841, Redon
in 1840]?and
much reli
giosity. He is charming."
58. This copy of Vercing?torix,on which Schur? had marked with a red
pencil the two scenes selected for the Th??tre d'Art, is not mentioned
in Roseline Bacou's description of Redon's
library ("La biblioth?que
d'Odilon Redon").
59. A detail from what appears to be the program of the play, including a
reproduction of Druidess, is reproduced without caption or source in
Marcel Guicheteau, Paul S?rusier (Paris: SIDE, 1976), 83; see Gott, The
Enchanted Stone, 111.
60. Gott, The Enchanted Stone, 111.
ART
794
BULLETIN
DECEMBER
2007 VOLUME
LXXXIX
NUMBER
4
61. See
"Redon's Spiritualism and the Rise of
ibid., 98; and Fred Leeman,
Mysticism," in Druick et al., Odilon Redon: Prince ofDreams, 215-36, at
227-30. Buddhism, especially its ideal of renunciation, was also impor
tant forWagner's
conception of Parsifal, which used material from an
earlier, unrealized project of a "Buddhist" opera entitled The Conquer
ors; see Merlin, "Parsifal," 6, 105, 111.
"Parsifal," 101, 109; and Sch?re,
tagne," 875-76.
62. Merlin,
"Les l?gendes de la Bre
63. See, for example, Emile Hennequin,
"Le pessimisme des ?crivains," in
La Revue Ind?pendante, 2 vols. (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1970-71),
vol. 1, 445-55
(October 1884), vol. 2, 61-78 (November 1884). In
Schur?'s "Les l?gendes de la Bretagne," Merlin is told that as a
prophet, he will be persecuted by humans and demons, and that
while he can expect the highest joys and the "divine ray of light" as a
reward, "insanity, shame and solitude" will also watch out for him
(882).
64. Sch?re,
65. See, for example, El?mire Zoila, The Androgyne: Fusion of theSexes
(London: Thames and Hudson,
1981). A late-tenth- or early-eleventh
century statue of this kind, from the Djenn? region inMali, was re
cently acquired by the French state for the Mus?e du Quai Branly,
in H?l?ne Leloup, Statuaire dogon (Strasbourg:
Paris; reproduced
shutter fasteners inVenice display a male
Amez, 1994). Traditional
head when the shutter is open and a female one when it is closed,
the three-dimensional figure being designed in such a way that the
male's bust becomes the female's hair and vice versa.
Eser, SchiefeBilder: Die Zimmernsche Anamorphose und andere
Augenspiele aus den Sammlungen des Germanischen Nationalmuseums, exh.
cat., Germanisches Nationalmuseum,
1998; Bodo von
Nuremberg,
Dewitz and Werner Nekes, Ich sehewas, was Du nicht siehst!Sehmaschinen
und Bilderwelten; Die Sammlung Werner Nekes, exh. cat., Museum Lud
"Com
wig, Cologne
(G?ttingen: Steidl, 2002); and Dario Gamboni,
Images and Political Representa
posing the Body Politic: Composite
inMaking Things Public?Atmospheres ofDemocracy,
tion, 1651-2004,"
exh. cat., ZKM-Center for Art
ed. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel,
and Media, Karlsruhe
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005), 162-95.
66. See Thomas
Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1968).
68. See Fr?d?ric Tristan, Le monde ? l'envers (Paris: Hachette,
67. See Mikhail
Iswolsky
1980).
69. See Dario Gamboni, Potential Images: Ambiguity and Indeterminacy in
Modern Art (London: Reaktion Books, 2002), 68-130, 149-67.
no. 11 (1938): 34-35.
Hugnet, "Devinettes," Minotaureb,
in
71. This image and two others from the same series are reproduced
Redstone Matchbox No. 1 (London: Redstone Press; San Francisco:
Chronicle Books, 1998); similar double heads can be found in Julian
Rothenstein and Mel Gooding, The Playful Eye (London: Redstone
70. Georges
Press, 1999).
late but particularly lucid exposition isJos?phin P?ladan, De
l'androgyne: Th?orie plastique (Paris: Sansot, 1910). Itmust be added
that there was no necessary contradiction between "monstrous" and
"ideal" in this context: see Evangh?lia Stead, Le monstre, le singe et le
foetus: T?ratogonie et d?cadence dans l'Europefin-de-si?cle (Geneva: Droz,
2004).
72. A
73. See, for example, works by Armand Point and Alexandre S?on, in
Jean-David Jumeau-Lafond, Les peintres de l'?me: Le symbolisme id?aliste
en France, exh. cat., Mus?e d'Ixelles, Brussels (Antwerp: Pandora,
1999), 120-35, 168-76.
74. See Gamboni, La plume et lepinceau, 193-94; Gott, The Enchanted Stone,
"Redon's Spiritualism," 215-36. Among persons
98-106; and Leeman,
connected to both Redon and P?ladan were Emile Bernard, El?mir
Bourges, and Antoine de la Rochefoucauld.
La plume et lepinceau, 303.
76. Jos?phin P?ladan, La d?cadence latine: ?thop?e (1891; reprint, Geneva:
Slatkine, 1979), vol. 4, Coeur en peine; L'androgyne, vii-xi, xvii.
toAndr? Mellerio,
Redon, 33-35.
77. Redon
78. Redon,
?
'ImWanderer
steckt
"Joseph Beuys im Gespr?ch mit Antje Graevenitz:
stets ein neuer Mensch,'"
in Der Raum Bayreuth: Ein Auftrag aus der
Zukunft, ed. Wolfgang Storch (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2002), 199-208,
at 203; the interview had taken place in the fall of 1982 in Beuys's
studio in D?sseldorf
(Graevenitz, e-mail to the author, August 16,
2006). See also Antje von Graevenitz, "Erl?sungskunst oder Befreiung
spolitik: Wagner und Beuys," in Unsere Wagner: Joseph Beuys, Heiner
M?ller, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Hans J?rgen Syberberg;Essays, ed. Gabriele
F?rg
August
16, 1898, in Redon,
Lettres d'Odilon
soi-m?me, 128 (1913).
79. Merlin, "Parsifal," 71, line 320: "Den Weg, den du suchst, / dess'
Pfade sollst du nicht finden: / denn Pfad' und Wege, / die dich mir
entf?hren, / so verw?nsch' ich sie dir: / Irre! Irre!" In a remarkable
comment on Wagner's
interpretation of the Grail legends, Claude
L?vi-Strauss suggested that the composer's "contribution to universal
mythology" consisted precisely in Parsifal's requirement of "knowing
and not knowing, that is, knowing what one ignores"; L?vi-Strauss,
in the
"De Chr?tien de Troyes ? Richard Wagner," first published
program of the 1975 Bayreuth festival, reprinted inMerlin, "Parsifal,"
100-107, at 107.
(Frankfurt: Fischer,
1984).
81.
"Joseph Beuys im Gespr?ch mit Antje Graevenitz," 208.
in lithography,
82. For a detailed analysis of Redon's working methods
see Gott, The Enchanted Stone, 27-36.
83. See Matthias Schatz, Der Betrachter imWerk von Odilon Redon: Eine rezep
tions?sthetischeStudie (Hamburg: Kr?mer, 1988), 48.
84. Gott, The Enchanted Stone, 33, 36.
85. Redon,
Vercing?torix, 17.
75. Gamboni,
80.
?
soi-m?me, 129 (1913).
The Head,
the Hand,
the
86. Pat Gilmour, "Lithographie Collaboration:
Heart," in Lasting Impressions: Lithography as Art, exh. cat., Australian
National Gallery, Canberra,
1998, 308-59, 378-81, at 322; see Gott,
The Enchanted Stone, 42-44.
87. For evidence of Redon's
tial Images, 153-54.
interest in visual puzzles,
see Gamboni,
Poten
'monde obscur de
88. Gert Mattenklott, "Zum sozialen Inhalt von Redons
in Selbstgespr?ch: Tageb?cher und Aufzeichnungen 1867
l'ind?termin?,'"
1915, by Odilon Redon
(Munich: Rogner und Bernhard, 1971), 207
19; and Harriet K. Stratis, "Beneath the Surface: Redon's Methods
in Druick et al., Odilon Redon: Prince ofDreams, 353-77.
and Materials,"
89. See Benedetto Croce, "Una teor?a della 'macchia'"
(1905), in Problemi
di est?tica e contribua alla storia dell'est?tica italiana (1909; Bari: Laterza,
(1934), trans.
1923), 238-48; Hans Sedlmayr, "Bruegel's Macchia"
Frederic J. Schwartz, in The Vienna School Reader: Politics and Art Histori
calMethod in the 1930s, ed. Christopher S. Wood
(New York: Zone
Books, 2000), 323-76; Heinrich Schmidt, "Leonardos Macchia,"
Zeitschriftf?r ?sthetik und allgemeine Kuntwissenschaft 12 (1967): 70-89,
no. 1; and Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, L'art de la tache: Introduction ? la
nouvelle m?thode dAlexander Cozens (Paris: Limon, 1990).
du
90. See Gustave Moreau 1826-1898, exh. cat., Galeries Nationales
Grand Palais, Paris (Paris: R?union des Mus?es Nationaux,
1998), for
"Hasard et
example, 159, cat. nos. 72, 73; and Raphael Rosenberg,
in Gustave
de Gustave Moreau,"
abstraction: Les palettes d'aquarelle
Moreau: Mythes et chim?res;Aquarelles et dessins secretsdu mus?e Gustave
Paris (Paris: R?union
Moreau, exh. cat., Mus?e de la Vie Romantique,
des Mus?es Nationaux,
2003), 93-107.
91. John Ruskin, The Elements ofDrawing: In Three Letters toBeginners, with
Illustrations Drawn by theAuthor (London: Smit, Elder, 1857), note to
sec. 5; and see Richard Shiff, C?zanne and theEnd of Impressionism: A
Study of theTheory, Technique, and Critical Evaluation ofModern Art (Chi
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).
92. Paul Val?ry, Introduction ? la m?thode de L?onard de Vinci (Paris: Galli
in La Nouvelle Revue 95 (Au
mard, 1957), 25, 33, previously published
gust 15, 1895): 742-70.
93. Redon, ? soi-m?me, 100: "Le sens du myst?re, c'est d'?tre tout le temps
dans l'?quivoque, dans les double, triple aspects, des soup?ons
ou qui le seront
d'aspect
(images dans images), formes qui vont ?tre,
selon l'?tat d'esprit du regardeur."
94. Alfred Jarry, "Commentaire pour servir ? l'intelligence de la pr?c?
dente image," Perhind?rion 2 (June 1896), in Oeuvres compl?tes,vol. 1,
ed. Michel Arriv? (Paris: Gallimard,
1972), 998-99. See Dario Gam
boni, "D?rer als Pataphysiker: Eine Bildlekt?re von Alfred Jarry," in
vom Anden R?gime bis
Jenseits der Grenzen: Franz?sische und deutscheKunst
zur Gegenwart; Thomas W. Gaehtgens zum 60. Geburtstag, vol. 3, Dialog der
Avantgarden, ed. Uwe Fleckner, Martin Schieder, and Michael F. Zim
mermann
(Cologne: DuMont, 2000), 29-41.
95. When he sold this small painting to Andries Bonger in 1898, Redon
described it as "the small head of a woman standing out in profile
sur ciel rouge]," and
against a red sky [la petite t?tedefemme se profilant
later in answer to a question from his Dutch patron and friend said
that it had "no special title" (see Andr? Bonger en zijn kunstenaars
vrienden Redon?Bernard?Van
Gogh, exh. cat., Rijksmuseum, Amster
dam, 1972, 16, no. 9). In his list of works sold to dealers and collec
tors, he noted it as Head of a Woman and described the figure as
red sun ... on a vague
"pensive, in profile on an orange-colored
(AMP, Mellerio Re
background of [crossed out: "violet"] mountains"
don Account Books [MRA], 1, 31). I thank Fred Leeman for giving
me access to his catalog of the Bonger collection (Amsterdam: Van
Gogh Museum,
forthcoming).
96. See Stratis, "Beneath
97. The demonstrative
the Surface."
effect is even stronger ifone
shifts, as can be done
UNFOLDING
on the computer screen, the degree of coincidence of the superimpo
sition. I thank Karin Patzke for having suggested and realized this ex
periment.
I am indebted to Rainer Michael Mason and Harriet Stratis on this
to an isolated testimony, Redon "frequently fur
point. According
rowed the granite [sic] so deep that several millimeters had to be
an unorthodox method that was "a source of annoyance to
pumiced,"
the professionals"; Claude Roger-Marx, French Original Engravings from
Manet to thePresent Time (New York: Hyperion Press, 1939), 31-32,
379 n. 53.
quoted in Gilmour, "Lithographic Collaboration,"
100. I owe this explanation
to Harriet
Stratis.
101. The cropped proof of Parsifal [I] (see n. 6 above) may have resulted
from an attempt by Redon to reduce this tension by concentrating
the image on the figure of Parsifal.
102. Redon,
Lettres d'Odilon Redon, 33-34.
et al., Odilon Redon: Prince ofDreams, 93, 104.
von Hartmann, Philosophie des Unbewussten (1869; Berlin:
Duncker, 1874), 239, 252.
103. See Druick
104. Eduard
"Im festen Zustand der suggestiven Betrachtung:
Odilon Redon und das Schweben als Voraussetzung
und Metapher
f?r das k?nstlerische Schaffen," inDie Couch: Vom Denken imLiegen,
ed. Lydia Marinelli, exh. cat., Sigmund-Freud-Museum,
Vienna
(Mu
nich: Prestel, 2006), 123-42.
106. Oskar Pfister, "Kryptolalie, Kryptographie und unbewusstes Vexierbild
bei Normalen," fahrbuch f?r psychoanalytische und psychopathologischeFor
schungen 5 (1913): 117-56, esp. 129-41.
107. Ibid., 145-51.
108. Sigmund Freud, Un souvenir d'enfance de L?onard de Vinci /Eine Kind
1991),
heitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci (1910; Paris: Gallimard,
206-7. On the "vulture" problem, see Meyer Schapiro, "Freud and
Leonardo: An Art Historical Study" (1955/1968);
and idem, "Further
Notes on Freud and Leonardo,"
in Theory and Philosophy ofArt: Style,
Artist, and Society; SelectedPapers (New York: George Braziller, 1994),
153-200.
METAMORPHOSIS
BY ODILON
REDON
795
1899) devoted by its author, Th?odore
Flournoy, to the young female
medium ?lise Catherine M?ller
("H?l?ne Smith"). Among the several
identi
personalities she developed was a male spirit named Leopold,
fied by participants in the s?ances as a reincarnation of the eigh
im
teenth-century occultist Giuseppe Balsamo
(Cagliostro). While
"became incarnated" inMiss
pressed by the way in which Leopold
M?ller, Flournoy remarked that the two personalities did not coexist
but alternated and proposed a rational account of Leopold's
"psycho
genesis" in which this "austere and rigid mentor" represents "a very
general psychological given" present in "every feminine soul of high
birth" (75-134).
98. Ted Gott described this impression as "a proof of a first state of Dru
idess,before the filling in of the background and additional tonal
work on the face and head-dress"
(TheEnchanted Stone, 110, no. 52),
but a new comparison with the other proof in the collection of the
Art Institute of Chicago
(Fig. 2) showed only differences ascribable to
the printing process.
99.
A LITHOGRAPHIC
117. Jung, Symbole derWandlung, 628. We have noted a likeness between
Redon's Br?nnhilde (Fig. 7) and his Druidess (Fig. 2).
118. See Sarah Kofmann, L'enfance de l'art: Une interpr?tationde l'esth?tique
freudienne (Paris: Payot, 1970).
119. Charles Morice, "L'hommage
? Goya," Petite Tribune R?publicaine, April
. . .Entendons-nous!
2, 1885: "Le r?ve de M. Redon
L'acception
qu'il
faut donner au mot R?ve n'est ni celle vulgaire et de prose (visions
fatales du sommeil), ni celle rare et de po?sie (visions volontaires de
la veille); c'est ceci et cela, c'est la veille et le sommeil, c'est propre
ment le r?ve d'un r?ve: l'ordonnance volontaire de visions fatales."
On Redon's approval, see Ted Gott, "Silent Messengers?Odilon
Re
don's Dedicated Lithographs and the 'Politics' of Gift-Giving," Print
Collector'sNewsletter 19, no. 3 (July-August 1988): 92-101, at 95.
120. Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1998), 26.
121. Odilon Redon, "Le Fakir," AMP, A-12, 1-33, at 4. See Druick et al.,
Odilon Redon: Prince ofDreams, 72; and Moran, Odilon Redon: ?crits, 91
114.
Les martyrs, 153, 156, 161; Schur?, Vercing?torix, iv; and
122. Chateaubriand,
idem, La druidesse, 10-11, 18, 20, 52-56.
123. See AMP, A-5 (Moran, Odilon Redon: ?crits, 29-46),
et al., Odilon Redon: Prince ofDreams, 41-42.
124. Charles Baudelaire, Oeuvres compl?tes,ed. Claude
Gallimard, 1976), 792.
125.
B-2, 4; and Druick
Pichois, vol. 2 (Paris:
Ibid., 793, 795.
126. See Ernst Haeckel, Anthropogenic, oderEntwicklungsgeschichte desMen
schen (Leipzig: Engelmann,
scientific interests, the
1874). On Redon's
most recent, book-length study is Barbara Larson, The Dark Side ofNa
ture: Science, Society, and theFantastic in theWork ofOdilon Redon (Uni
versity Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005).
109. In relation to his notion of "condensation," Freud refers not so much
toman-made
images as to Francis Galton's famous "composite photo
graphs"; this notion has antecedents in earlier research on the dream,
which had been available to the general public in France since the
1860s. See Jack J. Spector, The Aesthetics ofFreud: A Study inPsychoanal
ysis and Art (New York: Praeger, 1972), 125-27; Stefanie Heraeus,
Traumvorstellung und Bildidee: Surreale Strategien in derfranz?sischen
Graphik des 19. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Reimer, 1998); and idem, "Artists
and the Dream in Nineteenth-Century Paris: Towards a Prehistory of
Surrealism," History Workshop fournal & (1999): 153-68.
127. See Redon, ? soi-m?me, 18; and Merlin, "Parsifal," 46, 47, lines 131,
and metempsycho
109, 111. The connection between metamorphosis
sis was already established by Ovid in the Pythagorian introduction to
bk. 15 of The Metamorphoses; see the entry "M?tamorphose"
in Pierre
Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe si?cle (1866-79; reprint,
Geneva: Slatkine, 1982), vol. 11, pt. 1, 136.
110. Hermann
"The Hegel Legend of 'Thesis-Antithesis-Syn
129. See Gustav E. Mueller,
thesis,'" Journal of theHistory of Ideas 19, no. 3 (June 1958): 411-14;
and Henri Dorra, "The 'System' in Courbet's
'System Paintings,'" Ga
zettedes Beaux-Arts 121 (February 1993): 93-100. Mueller shows that
Hegel himself feared the automatic and prescribed character of a
"spiritless scheme" leading to "monotonous formalism" and attributes
the association of this "triplicity" with Hegel
to Karl Marx by way of
Heinrich Moritz Chalyb?us.
Rorschach, Psychodiagnostik:Methodik und Ergebnisse eines
wahrnehmungsdiagnostischen Experiments (Deutenlassen von Zufallsformen)
(Bern: Huber,
1921).
111. See Henri F. Ellenberger, "The Life and Work of Hermann Ror
schach (1884-1922),"
Bulletin of the
Menninger Clinic 18 (1954): 173
219; Lebensztejn, L'art de la tache,Peter Galison, "Image of Self," in
Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science, ed. Lorraine Das
ton (New York: Zone Books, 2004), 257-94, 414-18; and Gamboni,
Potential Images, 56-58, 189-90.
"'Fabrication of Accidents': Factura and Chance
in Nineteenth-Century Art," Res: fournal ofAnthropology and Aesthetics
(Autumn 1999): 205-25.
113. Carl Gustav Jung, Erinnerungen, Traume, Gedanken von C. G. fung, ed.
(Zurich: Walter, 1971), 24. Jung uses the term Klecksogra
Anielajaff?
phien, which goes back to the nineteenth-century Swabian poet and
physician Justinus Kerner; see his Kleksographien: Hadesbilder kleksogra
phisch entstanden und in Versen erl?utert,ed. Horst Brandst?tter (Stutt
in 1890.
gart: Lithos, 1998), written in 1857 and first published
114. Jung, Erinnerungen, 157.
115. C. G. Jung, Symbole derWandlung: Analyse des Vorspiels zu einer Schizophre
nie, 4th rev. ed. of Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (Zurich: Rascher,
1952), 373.
116. Jung, Erinnerungen, 408-10. A partial antecedent can be found in the
psychological monograph Des Indes ? la plan?te Mars: ?tude sur un cas
de somnambulisme avec glossolalie (Geneva: Atar; Paris: Fischbacher,
128. Metempsychosis was generally recognized as an essential trait of the
Druids' metaphysics:
see, for example, Larousse, Grand dictionnaire
universel, s.v. "Druide," vol. 6, pt. 2, 1301-2, and "M?tempsychose," vol.
11, pt. 1, 145-47.
130. See Gamboni,
131. L?vi-Strauss,
132. Schur?,
La plume et lepinceau, 31-48.
"De Chr?tien
de Troyes ? Richard Wagner,"
"Les l?gendes de la Bretagne,"
107.
867, 901.
133. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik (1812-16), vol.
1,Die objektiveLogik, in S?mtliche Werke, ed. H. Glockner
(Stuttgart:
Frommann; Bad Cannstatt: Holzboog,
1965), vol. 4, 118-21.
134. Ibid., 119: "Das Werden
ist eine haltungslose Unruhe, die in ein ru
higes Resultat zusammensinkt. / Dies k?nnte auch so ausgedr?ckt
werden: Das Werden
ist das Verschwinden von Seyn in Nichts, und
von Nichts in Seyn. ... Es
widerspricht sich also in sich selbst, weil es
solches in sich vereint, das sich entgegengesetzt
ist. ..."
135. See Hermann Glockner, Hegel-Lexikon, 2nd aug. ed., vol. 23 of Hegel,
S?mtliche Werke (Stuttgart: Frommann and Holzboog,
1957), 150; and
in Vocabulaire europ?en des
Philippe B?ttgen, "Aufheben, Aufhebung,"
philosophies: Dictionnaire des intraduisibles, ed. Barbara Cassin (Paris:
Seuil / Le Robert, 2004), 152-56.
136. Sigmund
Freud,
"?ber den Gegensinn
der Urworte"
(1910),
in Studi
796
ART
BULLETIN
DECEMBER
2007 VOLUME
LXXXIX
enausgabe, vol. 4, Psychologische Schriften (Frankfurt: Fischer,
34.
137.
NUMBER
1970), 227
Ibid., 234; and Hegel, Wissenschaft derLogik, 120: "F?r das spekulative
Denken ist es erfreulich, in der Sprache W?rter zu finden, welche eine
spekulative Bedeutung an ihnen selbst haben; die deutsche Sprache hat
mehrere dergleichen"; quoted inGlockner, Hegel-Lexikon, 150.
138. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, L'oeil et l'esprit (Paris: Gallimard,
1964), 62:
"C'est l'oeuvre elle-m?me qui a ouvert le champ d'o? elle appara?t
et devient la suite,
dans un autre jour, c'est elle qui sem?tamorphose
les r?interpr?tations interminables dont elle est l?gitimementsuscepti
ble ne la changent qu'en elle-m?me. ..."
139. See, for example, Richard Thomson,
"On Narrative and Metamorpho
sis," inDealing with Degas: Representation ofWomen and thePolitics of Vi
sion, ed. Richard Kendall and Griselda Pollock (New York: Universe,
1992), 146-58; and Le corps en morceaux, exh. cat., Mus?e d'Orsay,
Paris (Paris: R?union des Mus?es Nationaux,
1990), 201-18, 237-51.
140.
1898: Le Balzac
141. Ambroise
de Rodin, exh. cat., Mus?e
Rodin,
Paris, 1998, 244-52.
Vollard, Edgar Degas 1834-1917
(Paris: Cr?s, 1924), 112-13,
quoted inAnne Pingeot, Degas sculptures (Paris: R?union des Mus?es
Nationaux,
1991), 26: "Vous pensez surtout, Vollard, ? ce que ?a va
4
donn? un chapeau plein de diamants queje
lait,mais m'auriez-vous
n'aurais pas eu un bonheur ?gal ? celui que j'ai pris ? d?molir ?a
pour le plaisir de recommencer."
"Ars inveniendi et investigandi: Zur surrealisti
142. See Hans Holl?nder,
schen Methode," Wallraf-Richanz-fahrbuch 32 (1970): 193-233.
143. Gell, Art and Agency, 232ff.
144. Edmund Husserl, Zur Ph?nomenologie des innerenZeitbewusstseins (1893
1917), quoted in ibid., 241, with reference to J. N. Findlay, "Husserl's
Analysis of the Time Inner Consciousness," Monist 59, no. 1 (1975):
3-20.
145. Gell, Art and Agency, 243.
146. On Duchamp's
debt to Redon
specifically, see Gamboni,
ages, 142-48.
Potential Im
147. See Jed Deppman, Daniel Ferrer, and Michael Groden, eds., Genetic
Criticism: Texts and Avant-Textes (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylva
nia Press, 2004).
"Formes," the recent issue of Genesis: Revue Internationale de Cri
tique G?n?tique 24 (2004), devoted to the visual arts.
148. See
149. See Gott, "Silent Messengers,"
92-101;
and
idem, The Enchanted Stone.

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