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 Mallarme 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 Pen" transforms the way we understand Redon's career and brings to life the interaction between writers and artists in fin-de-siecle 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 Pen" offers a critical reappraisal of the interaction of art, writing, criticism, and government institutions in late nineteenth-century France.
About the Author
Dario Gamboni is professor of the history of art at the University of Geneva. He is the author of many books in French and English.
Mary Whittall was a professional translator living in England. Among her translations are Roland Recht's "Believing and Seeing: The Art of Gothic Cathedrals", also published by the University of Chicago Press.
Reviews
"Gamboni combines the skills of the philologist and sociologist, the iconographer and literary historian, the connoisseur and semiotician. His 'La plume et le pinceau' was a fresh and formidable intervention when it first appeared in 1989, but is even more so now, translated and extensively revised. He has taken account of an intervening generation of archival discovery and critical scholarship to expose an artist who sought to construct for himself a myth of autochthony. In exposing that myth, Gamboni has revealed the historical and cultural origins of one of the least understood symbolists, while bringing to light the close but often conflictual relationship between artistic and literary modernism" – Stephen Eisenman, Northwestern University
"Interest in the work of Odilon Redon has never been stronger than at the present time. Gamboni's splendid study is the fruit of many years' consideration of Redon's diversified and distinctive career, which it situates in the broader context of word and image studies. Indeed, the book can be regarded as a model of how to set the theoretical issues involved in this field within a highly detailed and convincing historical framework" – Stephen Bann, University of Bristol
"The translation of Gamboni's groundbreaking study of Redon is long overdue. When the French version appeared in 1989 it transformed our understanding of Redon, notably the crucial problematic of word-image relations in his work and the place of this in the cultural field of the late nineteenth century. Now revised and updated in the light of recent scholarship, 'The Brush and the Pen' maintains its central place in contemporary debates about fin-de-siecle art, literature, criticism, and institutions. This is a major work of scholarship on one of our most interesting and complex artist-writers, carried out with historical, theoretical, and critical acumen and interpretive insight" – Michele Hannoosh, University of Michigan
