The Brush and the Pen

by Gamboni, Dario; Whittall, Mary

• ISBN13: 9780226280554
• ISBN10: 0226280551
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-12-06
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

French symbolist artist Odilon Redon (1840 ;1916) seemed to thrive at the intersection of literature and art. Known as ;the painter-writer, ; he drew on the works of Poe, Baudelaire, Flaubert, and Mallarmé for his subject matter. And yet he concluded that visual art has nothing to do with literature. Examining this apparent contradiction, The Brush and the Pentransforms the way we understand Redon's career and brings to life the interaction between writers and artists in fin-de-siècle Paris. Dario Gamboni tracks Redon's evolution from collaboration with the writers of symbolism and decadence to a defense of the autonomy of the visual arts. He argues that Redon's conversion was the symptom of a mounting crisis in the relationship between artists and writers, provoked at the turn of the century by the growing power of art criticism that foreshadowed the modernist separation of the arts into intractable fields. In addition to being a distinguished study of this provocative artist, The Brush and the Penoffers a critical reappraisal of the interaction of art, writing, criticism, and government institutions in late nineteenth-century France.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Preface to the Revised Edition	p. xiii
Acknowledgments	p. xix
Introduction	p. 1
The Artist and His Myth	p. 11
The Quest for Origins and Their Effacement	p. 11
Indecision and Artistic Vocation	p. 16
Art versus Determinism	p. 24
The Painter as Poet-Philosopher	p. 29
The Review of the 1868 Salon	p. 29
The Later Writings	p. 34
The Ethical Basis of Drawing	p. 40
Recourse to Literary Sources	p. 42
Entering the Artistic Field	p. 53
A Late Start, Individualism, and Marginal Status	p. 53
Lithography as an Expedient	p. 58
Astray on the Boulevard? The Exhibitions of 1881 and 1882	p. 63
The Writers' Role	p. 71
Introductions	p. 71
Redon and the Decadents: Homologies and Affinities	p. 73
Criticism and Its Interests	p. 78
J.-K. Huysmans, Priority, and Primacy	p. 81
Writers as Artists' Agents	p. 87
Criticism as Transubstantiation	p. 94
Portraits of the Bourgeois as an Artist	p. 96
The Edgar Allan Poe of the Graphic Arts	p. 101
A Literary Public-a Literary Art?	p. 101
The Question of Illustration	p. 103
Translating Poe	p. 106
Literary References, Titles, Captions, and Albums	p. 119
"On the Frontiers of All the Arts"	p. 125
J.-K. Huysmans and Poetic Criticism	p. 129
An Album and Its Transposition	p. 133
J.-K. Huysmans, "The New Album by Odilon Redon"	p. 133
The Homage to Goya Campaign and the Crystallization of Symbolism	p. 142
The Technique and Principles of Transposition	p. 145
Face of Mystery: Iconology and Communication	p. 153
Pre-iconographical Analysis	p. 154
From Dürer to Pascal: Sources, Comparisons, and the Semantic Field	p. 160
Face of Mystery as Self-Portrait: An Image of the Artist and of Art	p. 174
Face of Mystery as a Mirror	p. 181
Ambiguity, Exegesis, and a Community of Equals	p. 187
The Expanse and the Limits of the Restricted Field	p. 195
Internationalism and Marginality	p. 195
Proselytism and Exclusiveness	p. 201
The Limitations of Literary Friendships	p. 205
Estrangement from Huysmans and the Move to the Right Bank	p. 208
Redon's Change of Direction	p. 215
The Turning Point Explained	p. 215
The End of Artistic Isolation	p. 220
Illustration as Interpretation	p. 237
La tentation: Avatars of Literary Associations	p. 238
The "Renaissance of Lithography"	p. 250
"Consecration" and Ambiguities of Symbolism	p. 255
The Primacy of Admirers and the Limits of Recognition	p. 263
Redon in the Arena of Criticism	p. 271
Avowals, Denials, and Polemics	p. 275
The Brush Takes Up the Pen: The Late Writings	p. 281
New Views of Art, Literature, and Criticism	p. 288
Friends and Foes: The Pen and the Brush	p. 301
A Posthumous Triumph	p. 301
Family Quarrels	p. 306
A Fin-de-Siècle Crisis in Artist-Writer Relations	p. 313
The Rise of Formalism and the Complicity of Adversaries	p. 322
Conclusion	p. 329
Notes	p. 331
Index	p. 389
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