Everywhere Eyeballs are Aflame 1888

Editor: So this is "Everywhere Eyeballs are Aflame," a charcoal and pencil drawing by Odilon Redon from 1888. It's... intense. The floating eye really dominates the composition, doesn’t it? What's your take on this? Curator: The intensity is palpable, isn’t it? Redon’s symbolist works often explore the darker recesses of the psyche and engage with contemporary anxieties surrounding surveillance and the gaze. Given the social and political context of 1888, with anxieties surrounding industrialization, class divisions, and burgeoning technologies, how might we interpret this all-seeing eye? Is it oppressive, accusatory, or something else entirely? Editor: I guess oppressive is the first word that comes to mind. It feels very much like someone is always watching. Is there something to that interpretation? Curator: Absolutely. Redon was working in a period where traditional hierarchies were being challenged. This disembodied eye, presented with almost scientific precision amidst fantastical elements, can be read as a critique of power structures, perhaps male dominated or linked to an increasingly pervasive surveillance state. The flames shooting out almost look like the radiating energy of surveillance technology...but they could just be pure psychic pain. How do you reconcile the sharp draftsmanship of the eye itself with the more gestural, less defined mountain and sky? Editor: It's like two different realities clashing. The defined eye, watching over the blurry world... Maybe it's the artist’s inner critic looming large? Curator: Interesting. It’s like the artwork gives form to the kind of crippling self-doubt we may inflict upon ourselves. Thinking of it in relation to second-wave feminist thinkers, the all-seeing eye seems almost to be an abstract personification of male hegemony. Editor: That's fascinating. I came in thinking only about the individual, but now I see how societal power dynamics are represented here, too. Curator: Exactly! Redon provides a launchpad. What began with our perceptions can launch to a full critique of systems, as well as self.