• L’Infiniment Petit and Monstrous Social Anxieties: Envisioning Disease in Fin de Siècle Culture through the Eyes of Odilon Redon

This essay explores the visual representation of infectious disease in fin de siècle Europe. Prior to the advancement of microbiology, diseases such as cholera were conflated with factors intrinsic to the diseased individual and society: moral impropriety and adverse living conditions of the urbanized city. With the advent of the germ theory of disease, the social understanding of pathogenesis began to shift. French artist Odilon Redon embraced the use of humanized features and ambiguity in his noir lithographs and charcoal drawings. In doing so, Redon created discrete entities of life – causes of illness external to one’s being. Through the comparison of the modes of visual representation, this essay illustrates the dialogue between society and the medical sciences, a relationship still of importance in our present day.