The Green Fairy

The Green Fairy

Stories behind the Works of Art

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The Absinthe Drinker (1901). Viktor Oliva

Absinthe (also generically referred to as Pernod, which in fact was its most important trademark) is the drink we identify with the Parisian bohemia of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

A green drink with a powerful hallucinogenic effect, it was considered the “green fairy” or “inspirational muse” of poets and painters.

The myth (which probably has a lot of reality) is that many great creators drank it just before working, thus stimulating their creativity. And that is something that has contributed greatly to defining the artist we have in our collective imagination: that “cursed artist,” often drunk, who led a marginal, stormy life of “romantic” decadence and self-destruction.

Accused of provoking madness and criminal behavior, absinthe became illegal in different countries until its prohibition came to France in 1915.

With his clever humor, the writer Oscar Wilde described the enchanting power of the “green fairy” as follows: “After the first glass of absinthe, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.”

Recommended links:

What is the Bohemia?

Stories behind the Works of Art: Monet and the Rouen Cathedral.

Stories Behind Works of Art: Ulysses and the Sirens, John William Waterhouse.

Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting: The Burial of the Count of Orgaz,  El Greco.

Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting: The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, Caravaggio.

Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Picasso.

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