It Is a Skull Wreathed with Roses. It Dominates a Woman’s Torso of Pearly Whiteness 1888

Odilon Redon created this lithograph, “It Is a Skull Wreathed with Roses. It Dominates a Woman’s Torso of Pearly Whiteness”, using the process of drawing with a greasy crayon onto a flat slab of Bavarian limestone. The lithographic process is all about surfaces: the way that the slightly rough texture of the stone grabs the crayon, and the careful chemical treatment that allows ink to adhere only to the drawn lines. The velvety blacks are particularly interesting. They weren't achieved with just one pass of the printing press. Instead, Redon likely built up the density of the shadows gradually, through multiple layers of ink. Think of it almost like applying glazes in painting. The result is not just an image, but an object with a real material presence. Redon made a conscious choice to work with this particular process. In doing so, he allied himself with a tradition of printmaking, a medium that inherently lends itself to the production of multiples, accessible to a wide audience, not just the wealthy elite.