Odilon Redon

Bertrand-Jean Redon, better known as Odilon Redon (April 20, 1840 – July 6, 1916) was a French Symbolist painter, printmaker, draughtsman and pastellist.

Odilon Redon

Odilon Redon : Part 1 : Part 2 : Part 3

A Flying Monster Threatens to Strike with a Wing an Oblivious Person with an Ornate Cap

A Fishing Boat (after Eugene Isabey)

A Long Chrysalis, the Color of Blood

A Man with Laurels

A Mask Sounds the Funeral Knell

A Pot of Geraniums

A Sheet of Studies

A Woman Clothed with the Sun

A Woman Seen through a Window Surrounded by Spheres and a Face with Eyes

A.M.R. Bonger - van der Linden

Aged Angel

Alsace

An Eye Floating in the Sky above a Mountain

And Another Angel Came out of the Temple Which Is in Heaven, and He also Having a Sharp Sickle

And He Had in His Right Hand Seven Stars, and out of His Mouth Went a Sharp Two-Edged Sword

And I Saw an Angel Come Down from Heaven, Having the Key of the Bottomless Pit and a Great Chain in His Hand

And I Saw in the Right Hand of Him That Sat on the Throne a Book Written within...,

And the Angel Took the Cense

And the Devil That Deceived Them Was Cast into the Lake of Fire and Brimstone, where the Beast and the False Prophet Are

And There Fell a Great Star from Heaven, Burning as It Were a Lamp

Andromeda and the Monster

Andromeda

Anemones - Man-Flower

Anemones and Poppies in a Vase

Anemonies in a Blue Vase

Angel Executions

Angel in Chains,

Angelica and the Dragon,

Animals of the Bottom of the Sea

Animals of the Sea

Apache (Man on Horseback)

Apache (Man on Horseback),

Apollo in the Suncarriage

Apollo's Chariot

Apparition in the Window

Apparition,

Ari,

Baroness Robert de Domecy,

Bather,

Bathers,

Battle,

Bazon, the Artist's Cat,

Beatrice,

Beatrice

Before the Black Sun of Melancholy, Lenore Appears,

Begonia in a Pot,

BellTower Keeper,

Below, I Saw the Vaporous Contours of a Human Form,

Birches at Bievres

Black Profile (also known as Homage to Gauguin),

Black Top,

Boat in the Moonlight

Boats on the Beach

Bouquet in a Chinese Vase,

Bouquet in a Persian Vase,

Bouquet of Flowers in a Blue Vase

Bouquet of Flowers in a Blue Vase,

Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase

Bouquet of Flowers in a White Vase

Bouquet of Flowers,

Bouquet of Flowers, Irises

Bouquet of Flowers

Bouquet of Wild Flowers,

Bouquet with White Lilacs in a Japanese Vase,

Bouquet

Breton Landscape

Breton Village,

Brunnhilde (The Twilight of the Gods),

Brunnhilde,

Buddha and Flowers,

Buddha in His Youth,

Buddha Walking among the Flowers,

Buddha,

Bust of a Man Sleeping among the Flowers

Butterflies and Flowers

Butterflies and Pinguin

Carnations in the Green Pitcher

Ceaselessly by My Side the Demon Stirs,

Centaur Aiming at the Clouds,

Centaur Aiming at the Clouds

Centaur and Dragon,

Centaur,

Christ and Bush,

Christ and Samaritan Woman

Christ Crowned with Thorns,

Christ with Red Thorns,

Composition Flowers without a Vase,

Composition Flowers

Composition Fantastical

Daisies and Rowan Berries,

Daisies,

Dante's Vision,

Decoration,

Design for a Prayer Rug,

Despair,

Devotion near a Red Bush,

Diana

Domecy Decoration The Yellow Flowering Branch

Domecy Decoration Large Decorative Panel with Floral Decor,

Dream Polyp

Dream,

Dreams I. A Veil, a Printed Image,

Dreams II. And over There, the Astral Idol, the Apotheosis,

Dreams III. The Vague Glimmer of a Head Suspended in Space,

Dreams IV. In the Shadow of the Wing, the Black Creature Bit,

Dreams V. Pilgrim from a Sublunar World,

Dreams VI. The Day,

Druidesse,

Etruscan Vase with Flowers,

Eve,

Eve

Evocation (also known as Head of Christ (Inspiration from a Mosaic in Revenna)

Evocation (Woman at the Mountain)

Evocation of Butterflies,

Evocation of Roussel,

EyeBalloon,

Eye

Face of Mystery (In my dream I saw in the Sky a Face of Mystery),

Fallen Angel Looking at Cloud,

Fantasy

Fight of the Centaurs

Figure (Yellow Flower),

Figure in Profile,

Figure under a Blossoming Tree,

Flore of Marine Underwater

Flower and Butterflies with Profile,

Flowers in a Black Vase,

Flowers in a Blue Jug,

Flowers in a Blue Vase

Flowers in a Brown Vase,

Flowers in a Pot on a Red Background

Flowers in a Red Pitcher,

Flowers in a Small Pot,

Flowers in a Turquoise Vase,

Flowers in a Vase

Flowers in a Vase,

Flowers in Green Vase with Handles,

Flowers in Japanese Vase,

Flowers in Japanese Vase

Flowers,

Frontispiece from Emile Verhaeren's Les Debacles,

Geranium

Geraniums and Other Flowers in a Vase,

Geraniums,

Germination,

Germination

Girl with Chrysanthemums,

He Fixed His Eyes on Me with an Expression That Was So Strange,

Head of a Child with Flowers,

Head of a Sleeping Woman,

Head of a Woman with Flowers in Profile

Head of a Woman with Head Bowed,

Head of a Young Girl

Head of a Young Woman in Profile,

Head of Christ,

Head of Jesus Christ,

Head of Saint John the Baptist

Homage to Leonardo da Vinci,

Homage to Leonardo da Vinci

Horse with a Dragon

Hunters on the Etang River,

I Saw a Flash of Light, Large and Pale,

Icarus

If on a Close Dark Night a Good Christian, out of Charity, behind Some Old Ruin, Buries Your Arched Body,

Imaginary Figure

In the Shadow Are People, Weeping and Praying, Surrounded by Others Who Are Exhorting Them,

Initiation to Study Two Young Ladies,

Odilon Redon : Part 1 : Part 2 : Part 3

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Odilon Redon

Life

Odilon Redon (pronounced o dee lawn r'dawn) was born in Bordeaux, Aquitaine to a prosperous family. The young Bertrand-Jean Redon acquired the nickname "Odilon" from his mother, Odile.[1] Redon started drawing as a child, and at the age of ten he was awarded a drawing prize at school. Aged fifteen, he began the formal study of drawing, but on the insistence of his father he changed to architecture. His failure to pass the entrance exams at Paris’ École des Beaux-Arts ended any plans for a career as an architect, although he briefly studied painting there under Jean-Léon Gérôme in 1864. (His younger brother Gaston Redon would become a noted architect.)

Back home in his native Bordeaux, he took up sculpture, and Rodolphe Bresdin instructed him in etching and lithography. His artistic career was interrupted in 1870 when he joined the army to serve in the Franco-Prussian War.

At the end of the war, he moved to Paris, working almost exclusively in charcoal and lithography. He called his visionary works, conceived in shades of black, his noirs. It would not be until 1878 that his work gained any recognition with Guardian Spirit of the Waters, and he published his first album of lithographs, titled Dans le Rêve, in 1879. Still, Redon remained relatively unknown until the appearance in 1884 of a cult novel by Joris-Karl Huysmans titled, À rebours (Against Nature). The story featured a decadent aristocrat who collected Redon's drawings.

In the 1890s, pastel and oils became his favored media, and he produced no more noirs after 1900. In 1899, he exhibited with the Nabis at Durand-Ruel's. In 1903 he was awarded the Legion of Honor.[2] His popularity increased when a catalogue of etchings and lithographs was published by André Mellerio in 1913 and that same year, he was given the largest single representation at the New York Armory Show.

Redon died on July 6, 1916. In 1923 Mellerio published: Odilon Redon: Peintre Dessinateur et Graveur. An archive of Mellerio's papers is held by the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries at the Art Institute of Chicago.

In 2005 the Museum of Modern Art launched an exhibition entitled "Beyond The Visible", a comprehensive overview of Redon's work showcasing more than 100 paintings, drawings, prints and books from The Ian Woodner Family Collection. The exhibition ran from October 30, 2005 to January 23, 2006.[3]

Analysis of his work
Portrait of Violette Heymann, 1910. Pastels, 72 x 92 cm. Cleveland Museum of Art.

The mystery and the evocation of the drawings are described by Huysmans in the following passage:

    "Those were the pictures bearing the signature: Odilon Redon. They held, between their gold-edged frames of unpolished pearwood, undreamed-of images: a Merovingian-type head, resting upon a cup; a bearded man, reminiscent both of a Buddhist priest and a public orator, touching an enormous cannon-ball with his finger; a spider with a human face lodged in the centre of its body. Then there were charcoal sketches which delved even deeper into the terrors of fever-ridden dreams. Here, on an enormous die, a melancholy eyelid winked; over there stretched dry and arid landscapes, calcinated plains, heaving and quaking ground, where volcanos erupted into rebellious clouds, under foul and murky skies; sometimes the subjects seemed to have been taken from the nightmarish dreams of science, and hark back to prehistoric times; monstrous flora bloomed on the rocks; everywhere, in among the erratic blocks and glacial mud, were figures whose simian appearance--heavy jawbone, protruding brows, receding forehead, and flattened skull top--recalled the ancestral head, the head of the first Quaternary Period, the head of man when he was still fructivorous and without speech, the contemporary of the mammoth, of the rhinoceros with septate nostrils, and of the giant bear. These drawings defied classification; unheeding, for the most part, of the limitations of painting, they ushered in a very special type of the fantastic, one born of sickness and delirium."[4]

Redon also describes his work as ambiguous and undefinable:

    "My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined."[5]

Redon's work represent an exploration of his internal feelings and psyche. He himself wanted to "place the visible at the service of the invisible"; thus, although his work seems filled with strange beings and grotesque dichotomies, his aim was to represent pictorially the ghosts of his own mind. A telling source of Redon's inspiration and the forces behind his works can be found in his journal A Soi-même (To Myself). His process was explained best by himself when he said:

    "I have often, as an exercise and as a sustenance, painted before an object down to the smallest accidents of its visual appearance; but the day left me sad and with an unsatiated thirst. The next day I let the other source run, that of imagination, through the recollection of the forms and I was then reassured and appeased."

References

   1. ^ Online Essay on Odilon Redon
   2. ^ Redon and Werner (1969), p. ix.
   3. ^ Danielle O'Steen (November 2005). Dark Dreamer. ART + AUCTION. http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/1458/dark-dreamer/. Retrieved 2008-05-20
   4. ^ Huysmans, Joris-Karl (1998). Against Nature. Translated by Margaret Mauldon, Oxford University Press. pp. 52–53. ISBN 0140440860.
   5. ^ Goldwater, Robert; Marco Treves, Marco (1945). Artists on Art. Pantheon. pp. 360. ISBN 0394709004.

Bibliography

    * Russell T. Clement, Four French Symbolists: A Sourcebook on Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, and Maurice Denis, Greenwood Press, 1996, ISBN 0313297525 & ISBN 978-0313297526
    * Jodi Hauptman and Marina Van Zuylen, Beyond the Visible: The Art of Odilon Redon, 2005, ISBN 0870707027 & ISBN 978-0870707025
    * Andre Mellerio, Odilon Redon, 1968, ASIN B0007DNIKO
    * Odilon Redon and Alfred Werner, The Graphic Works of Odilon Redon, Dover, 1969, ISBN 0486219968
    * Odilon Redon and Alfred Werner, The Graphic Works of Odilon Redon, (Dover Pictorial Archive), 2005, ISBN 048644659X & ISBN 978-0486446592
    * Margret Stuffmann, Odilon Redon: As in a Dream, 2007, ISBN 377571894X & ISBN 978-3775718943

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