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 Pen transforms 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 Pen offers a critical
reappraisal of the interaction of art, writing, criticism, and
government institutions in late nineteenth-century France.