Odilon Redon, Fantastic Figure, no. 3 from the series “Planches d’essai”, French, 1900, Lithograph

Also called Woman Wearing a Toque and a Mermaid Tail, this lithograph was included in a series of plates to illustrate the poem A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance by Stéphane Mallarmé—a 19th-century French poet who spearheaded the literary movement of symbolism.  Rejecting realism, symbolists valued creative, imaginative interpretation, like the fanciful figure in this lithograph. A personal friend of Odilon Redon, Mallarmé saw the pairing of literature and art as the pinnacle of ‘L’Oeuvre’, or the ultimate expression of an artist’s greatest work. This was Redon and Mallarmé’s only collaboration, and it was left unfinished. The book describes a shipwreck, a possible explanation for the inclusion of the fishtail and fins. Written as a series of disjointed images—a captain struggling at the helm, a corpse out at sea, water rushing through the beard of a man—the poem is visually complex. However, there is no mermaid. Redon never recorded how this lithograph corresponded to the poem, and since the illustrations for the book were incomplete, little is known about its relationship to the text.

    Redon’s critics labeled him a symbolist because of his non-representational images and dream-like figures, though the over-analyzation of his work often troubled him. He frequently depicted people as balloons or lights, and human flight was a common theme. While critics praised Redon and many literary figures adored him, his creative images didn’t meet with popular approval. Therefore, he relied on commissions—such as Mallarmé’s—and particular collectors, like André Bonger and Gabriel Frizeau, to make ends meet.