The Dawn of of the Dream, or Les Fleurs du Mal 

Charles Maurin created this enigmatic lithograph, "The Dawn of the Dream, or Les Fleurs du Mal," around the turn of the 20th century. The composition arranges figures in a landscape under a tree with a city faintly visible in the background. The scene is bisected. To the left, we see clothed figures with darker coloring and hard geometric lines, contrasting with the soft forms of the nudes on the right. This division provokes questions about the work's symbolic structure. The contrast between the clothed and unclothed figures suggests a tension between the intellectual and the sensual. Are these figures a semiotic system? The title, referencing Baudelaire's "Flowers of Evil," indicates a connection between beauty and decay. The ambiguity is key here; the image does not settle into one meaning but destabilizes and invites ongoing interpretation. It challenges us to reconsider how we categorize art and the world.