Allegro (Sonata of the Serpent) 1908

Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis made this piece, Allegro (Sonata of the Serpent), with watercolor, its pale, translucent washes a bit like a dream. There’s a sense of a journey, maybe even a game, embedded in the marks themselves. The way the color pools and settles reminds me of the way I start a painting, letting the pigment spread and find its own form before I even try to control it. Look at the stones in the bridge—each one outlined, filled with subtly different shades, as if he wanted to account for every single detail. It’s like he’s mapping out a whole world, one stone at a time. I love the way he’s repeated those arches under the bridge, creating these weird reflections that feel both solid and totally unreal. Ciurlionis's work often feels like a conversation with artists like Odilon Redon, who knew a thing or two about making dreamscapes feel real. There's no one right way to see this. It's about making space for different ways of imagining.