Into the Woods (After Bilibin)
2004
pencil, grease pencil, watercolor, charcoal on paper
210 x 150 centimeters
Unique
Based on a fairytale illustration by Ivan Bilibin, van Dongen's traveller is no sweet Cinderella. Engulfed in a Matthias Grunewald-ish forest, the dark forces of nature are dwarfed by her own self-possession. Drawing on a Comme Des Garçons chic, van Dongen presents not an incongruity of time, but a sense of a displacement of chronology, a possible now, set somewhere else. Patricia Ellis