Christa Giles

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Huysmans, but claimed in one of his letters not to be fond
of his work.
In these illustrations the use of words juxtaposed
with images was suggestive and generated an internal
tension in each piece. In ˝Salomé with the Head of John the
Baptist,˝ the illustration contains the words ˝J’ai baisé ta
bouche Iokanaan/J’ai baisé ta bouche.˝ Salomé crouches,
staring with narcissistic hunger at the severed head of John
the Baptist held in her hands. The two are suspended in
space, suspended on the brink of a kiss which never takes
place, although the inscription ironically suggests that it
already has done so. John the Baptist’s blood streams
downward like white ribbon onto a drooping flower which
is juxtaposed with another phallic flower on the left,
perhaps evoking Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal. The sexual
associations contrive simultaneously to be oblique and to
focus our attention on them. The purely decorative
grapelike forms in the background seem to belie any
meaning, resolving the entirety into pure design. However,
the words insist upon an interpretation. Thus the whole
elaborate design creates a sense of ambivalence, teasing the
onlooker’s eye with patterns poised over nothingness. The
interrelationship between word and image is deliberate, as
each nuance-laden sentence conjures up a sort of reverie
which in effect becomes the illustration itself: