Jean-Georges CORNELIUS (Paris, 1880 - Ploubazlanec,... Lot 196

Jean-Georges CORNELIUS (Paris, 1880 - Ploubazlanec, 1963). "Terror of Asia", 1927 Oil, gouache and charcoal on cardboard. Height: 63.5 cm. Width : 45.5 cm. This work, part of a suite of twelve, was created by Cornélius to illustrate Charles Baudelaire's "Les paradis artificiels". This work, enriched with ten selected works, including "Terreur de l'Asie", was published in 1933 by Javal et Bourdeaux (Olivier Levasseur, Jean-Georges Cornélius, un primitif du XXème siècle, Rennes : éditions Apogée, 2009, p. 50). Provenance: Galerie Marie Watteau, Salon du Pavillon, Paris, 2008. Let's immerse ourselves in reading Chapters IV, "Opium Tortures" and V, "A False Denouement": "Space swelled, so to speak, to infinity. Astonishing, monstrous architectures rose in his brain (...) dreams of terraces, towers, ramparts, rising to unknown heights. (...) I was transported every night by this man in the midst of Asian paintings. (...) I have often thought that, if I were forced to live in China, among (...) the scenery of Chinese life, I would go mad. (...) My sleep is tumultuous, (...) it is always, as Milton's frightening verse says: Encumbered with threatening faces and flaming arms". It's hard to imagine a better brush to illustrate Baudelaire's singular work. A mystical, inhabited painter was needed to translate the dream, the anguish, the euphoria, the delirium. Cornélius delivers here what only a cultivated soul can do. A soul that would give itself almost entirely to Christ when he converted to Catholicism four years later. In this case, the term "illustration" is reductive, almost inappropriate, since it is the very essence of the literary work that is here, before our very eyes. "You have to try (...) to put yourself in the place of the characters, to penetrate them, otherwise you fall into the banal and the déjà-vu" (Lettres à une Carmélite). These paintings are a reminder of Cornelius's genius as a colorist. Without any compromise, without any desire to seduce, here is the exact translation of a dialogue, of an inner penetration: "We are alone in hearing the music that accompanies our thought, and the words we say, and what counts is the emotion and passion of this music" (Ibid). Here, the artist surprisingly responds to the poet who spins the musical metaphor in this work: "Sounds are clothed in colors, and colors contain music". Cornélius writes as Baudelaire paints.