The Wall of His Room Was Opening Up and through the Crack a Death's-Head Was Projected (La Muraille de sa chambre s'entr'ouvrait et de la fente était projetée une tête de mort) (frontispiece) from Le Juré
Odilon Redon
French, 1840–1916
1887
A lithograph frontispiece in which Redon projects a spectral skull through a crack in a room’s wall, using printmaking to make an interior vision of dread visible.
The first thing that hits you is the pale, glowing skull set against dense black, its form carved out by rough, crosshatched strokes and tilted planes that create a claustrophobic, dreamlike space.
A key Symbolist image, this 1887 print helped establish lithography as a means to express subjective, psychological and uncanny states, influencing later modernists drawn to dreams and the unconscious.
Medium
Lithograph from an illustrated book with seven lithographs
Dimensions
composition: 7 1/16 × 5 7/8" (18 × 15 cm); page: 10 15/16 × 8 7/8" (27.8 × 22.5 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
The Louis E. Stern Collection
Accession
1029.1964.1
Palette
Exhibitions
