Sketch for the spectacle, The action of Theophile 1907

Here's a scene, Sketch for the spectacle, The action of Theophile, made by Ivan Bilibin in 1907. Imagine Bilibin with his pen and inks; he’s thinking about stage design, about atmosphere, about a play that never was... I mean, what is this world? Are those giant eyes looking up at us, the viewers, or is that us, looking up through the earth? Or is the earth itself an eyelid that we can see through? Is that a city on one side, and a temple on the other? It's almost a Rorschach blot with the fold in the middle, like a butterfly's wing. It's about symmetry, but it isn't. There is a conversation going on in painting all the time, between people, and maybe Bilibin was in conversation with illustrators such as Aubrey Beardsley. It’s a language spoken between painters over time. You pick up the common thread, and then you twist it, and change it, and make it your own. And that's how painting grows and shifts and finds new ways to ask questions.