by Odilon Redon
An eyeball the size of a balloon floats above a dark plain, rigged with lines that run down to a small platform carrying a head. Odilon Redon drew it on stone in 1882 as the first of six lithographs he dedicated to Edgar Allan Poe. The Art Institute of Chicago and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art both hold impressions.
The balloon is an eye. Its upper half is the white of the eye, with the dark iris rolled up to the left and cut off by the rim, as if turned up under a lid. The lower half is a heavy dark sphere, and lashes radiate from the top rim like a corona. From the underside of the sphere a fan of rigging lines runs down to a small flat platform hanging in the air.
On the platform sits a rounded dark head with two pale eyes marked in it. Redon gives it no body and no basket sides.
Below, a hard horizon cuts the sheet. Everything under it is black, worked with dense granular strokes, and a clump of pale spiky plants grows at the lower left. Above the horizon the sky is a soft light gray with a few smudged clouds. Redon signed the stone vertically at the upper right.
The title tells the reader where the eye is going. In French it reads L’oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l’infini — the eye, like a strange balloon, heads toward infinity.
The lithograph opens a set of six that Redon published in 1882 under the title À Edgar Poe, dedicated to the American writer, who had died in 1849. The Art Institute of Chicago holds the full set, along with the portfolio cover and frontispiece.
The other five carry captions as long as this one:
Only the first of those names a figure from Poe, in Lenore. The six plates do not run in narrative order and none is tied to a particular story or poem. A disembodied eye turns up twice across the set, once as this balloon and again in the fourth plate.
Redon was forty-two in 1882 and had been working almost entirely in black for years. He called those charcoal drawings and lithographs his noirs. Color did not arrive in any quantity until the 1890s, when he took up pastel and then oil.
Lithography multiplied that work. A charcoal drawing exists once; a lithographic stone yields an edition of many sheets, which is how the same image reached Chicago and Los Angeles.
The sheet reproduced here is in the Art Institute of Chicago, accession 1920.1570, part of the Stickney Collection. The lithograph is printed in black on ivory China paper, which is then laid down on white wove paper: the image area measures 26.3 by 19.8 centimeters, the full sheet 44.3 by 31.5.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art holds another impression, accession AC1997.14.1.1, bought with the Wallis Foundation Fund in memory of Hal B. Wallis. Its sheet measures 44.77 by 31.43 centimeters, a few millimeters off the Chicago sheet.
Close reading
The print has three parts stacked on top of each other: the eye, the rigging and its passenger, and the black ground below. The close views take them in that order.
1.The iris, rolled up under the rim
The pale area is the white of the eye, and the iris is a dark shape pushed up to the left and cut off by the rim, so the eye rolls upward rather than looking out at the viewer. The lower half of the sphere stays in solid black, which reads as both shadow and balloon fabric.
2.Lashes around the rim
Fine lashes radiate from the top of the sphere into the pale sky. They are the detail that settles the reading: without them the shape would be a balloon and nothing more.
3.The rigging lines
A fan of thin lines runs from the underside of the sphere down to the platform. They are drawn with the precision of a real balloon's rigging, against an image that is not otherwise literal.
4.What rides in the basket
A dark rounded head sits on a flat bar, with two pale eyes marked in it. Redon gives it no body, no basket sides and no ropes to hold onto, so the head appears to travel alone.
5.The black ground
Below a hard horizon the whole lower quarter of the print is worked black with granular strokes. It gives no depth and no features, and the flatness is what sets the balloon's height.
6.Pale plants at the corner
A clump of pale spiky leaves grows at the lower left, the only lit thing in the black. It is also the only point in the print where the ground has any detail at all.
Art Institute of Chicago
111 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60603, United States
Works on paper are light-sensitive and are shown in rotation, so the print is not on permanent view.
Plan your visit on the museum’s official website (opens in a new tab)A giant eyeball floating in the sky as a hot-air balloon, with rigging lines running down to a small platform that carries a head. Below it lies a black plain with a clump of pale plants at the left.
L’oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l’infini, which the Los Angeles County Museum of Art records under the series title À Edgar Poe. It translates as the eye, like a strange balloon, heads toward infinity.
No. Redon dedicated the set of six lithographs to Poe, under the title À Edgar Poe, rather than illustrating particular stories or poems. Only the second plate in the set names a figure from Poe, Lenore.
Six, published in 1882. The Art Institute of Chicago holds all six plus the portfolio cover and a frontispiece, catalogued from 1920.1568 to 1920.1576.
The Art Institute of Chicago holds the impression reproduced here, accession 1920.1570, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art holds another, accession AC1997.14.1.1. Prints from an edition are held in many collections, and works on paper are shown in rotation rather than permanently.
The image is about 26.3 by 19.8 centimeters and the sheet about 44.3 by 31.5, on the Art Institute of Chicago's impression. Sheet sizes vary slightly between impressions because sheets were trimmed differently.
The name Redon gave his own black-and-white work: charcoal drawings and lithographs that occupied him for roughly the first twenty years of his career. This print belongs to that period, which ended when he began working in pastel and oil color in the 1890s.
Associated with · 1882
The Metropolitan Museum of Art names Odilon Redon among the older painters who established Symbolism. The print is dated 1882, four years before Jean Moréas published the Symbolist manifesto, and the Art Institute of Chicago's record does not apply the label.
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View artistThe sources below include collection records, catalogues, scholarly research, and primary materials that informed this page. They document The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity, its making, and its place in cultural history.
The catalogue entry for the impression reproduced here: medium, image and sheet dimensions, credit line.
A second museum's record for the same print, carrying the original French title and its own measurements.
The standard modern exhibition catalogue on Redon, covering the lithographic sets of the 1880s.
Exhibition press release summarizing the black work and the later turn to color.
These references provide the documented foundation for this work's history and interpretation. Claim-level citations remain attached to the specific claims they support.
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