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As a teenager, the Chinese artist Tao Siqi was fascinated by the words of Charles Baudelaire, the French poet who was not exactly known for imagery of sweeping landscapes and cities in the rain.

His poetry in particular drew heavily from the European modernist tradition of Charles Baudelaire, Rainer Maria Rilke and Ezra Pound, though it remained rooted in its themes and imagery to the Piedmont South.

Beside her stood an ornate table featuring three tiny golden bottles etched with Mrs. Baudelaire's emblem—a bouquet of flowers tied together by a serpent—and a pile of lace handkerchiefs and three glass rods.

In it, he explored his own experiences with the drug cannabis at the Paris-based Club des Hachichins—some of which took place alongside the likes of Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac and Charles Baudelaire.

It was Baudelaire, from after he saw Wagner’s “Tannhaüser”: “I’ve witnessed a spectacle of time, space and light that I have never experienced before.”