Christa Giles

144
Redon not only focussed on the unconscious in terms of
subject matter, he also maintained that the imagination was
the messenger of the unconscious: ˝Nothing in art can be
done by the will alone. Everything is done by docile
submission to the coming of the ‘unconscious.’˝ 396 Wilde
also came to a similar conclusion although he believed that
great artists work both unconsciously and through self-
conscious deliberation. 397
The interest in the intellectual and in the
unconscious also accounts in part for the repeated motif of
the severed head in Redon’s work. The image possibly has
its origin in Moreau’s treatment of the Salomé theme. Des
Esseintes is fascinated by this new type of fantasy born of
˝sickness and delirium,˝ 398 and focusses on one lithograph,
˝Sur la Coupe,˝ from the series Dans le Rêve (1879), which he
describes as a ˝Merovingian head balanced on a cup.˝ 399 Of
course, while this lithograph suggests the head of John the
Baptist, it is also presented as an image drawn from the
subconscious, and cannot be reduced to one meaning. For
even as Wilde reiterated that art has an independent life
and ˝never expresses anything but itself,˝ 400 so too did
Redon claim that beauty ˝carries its own meaning in
itself.˝ 401