Illustration as ornament
Modern printmakers approached illustrations as decorations, executed in elegant and expressive lines, and positioned in playful dialogue with the text. In so doing, they gave themselves the freedom to let go of the fixed boundaries of the illustration on the page.
Pierre Bonnard allowed his delicate pink lithographs in Parallèllement to float above Paul Verlaine’s erotic poetry, fanning across the pages.
Text as illustration of the print
The usual process was actually reversed in the artists’ books Les Vierges and Les Tombeaux — innovative editions by the art dealer Siegfried Bing.
The Belgian Symbolist writer Georges Rodenbach wrote the texts for these books as free ‘illustrations’ to accompany the woodcuts and colour lithographs of two artist friends, József Rippl-Rónai and James Pitcairn-Knowles.
Pierre Bonnard, Artists' book Parallèlement by Paul Verlaine, 1900
József Rippl-Rónai, Artists' book Les vierges by Georges Rodenbach, 1895
Félix Vallotton, NIB, supplement to the journal La Revue blanche (15 February 1895), 1895
Further reading
- Maurice Denis, ‘Définition du Néo-traditionnisme’ in Théories, 1890-1910, du symbolisme et de Gauguin vers un nouvel ordre classique, Paris 1920
- Gordon N. Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book, 1700 to 1914, Ithaca 1986
- Clément Dessy, Patrick McGuinness, Les écrivains et les Nabis. La
littérature au défi de la peinture, Rennes 2015