Prelude (The knight prelude) 1909

Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis made this painting, "Prelude", and like many of his works, it feels as if it was made searching for a place to begin. There’s a ghostly knight emerging over a visionary landscape, rendered with a smoky, almost dreamlike touch. The paint is applied thinly, allowing the texture of the surface to peek through, which adds to this sense of a world not quite formed. Look at the way the buildings in the background seem to dissolve into the sky, or the hazy, indistinct figures lining the cliffs – it's as if the whole scene is in the process of becoming. The longer I look at this, the more I think of Odilon Redon's mystical scenes. Like Redon, Ciurlionis seems less interested in depiction than in conjuring a mood, exploring the shifting, elusive nature of form. The painting is less about what it shows than the possibilities it suggests.