JOURNAL ARCHIVES
SPRING 2008
ODILON REDON (1840-1916)
Odilon Redon: before and after
SPRING 2008
ODILON REDON: BEFORE AND AFTER
Self-portrait. Odilon Redon. 1880. Musée D'Orsay, Paris.
The job of the artist is to deepen the mystery.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English lawyer and philosopherOdilon Redon (1840-1916) was one of the outstanding artists of the Symbolism movement. Symbolism was a multi-disciplinary arts movement, most active in the late nineteenth century, which rejected naturalism and realism in favor of spirituality, the imagination and dreams.
The canon of his work presents in two distinctly different forms. The first half, until roughly the mid-1890's, is comprised of charcoals and lithographs. These pieces explored unusual and often grotesque subjects (e.g. plants with human heads). Redon was a private man and his work during this period remained relatively unknown until the publishing of J. K. Huysmans's novel À rebours (Against Nature) in 1884. The book's decadent hero collected Redon drawings and this mention brought considerable recognition and attention.
From 1886-1895, events in Redon's life laid the groundwork for the transformation of both the artist and his art. He and Camille Falte, his wife, had their first child, Jean, in May 1886. When Jean died the following November, the acutely sensitive and artistic Redon entered a prolonged period of depression and spiritual crisis. His melancholy further deepened during a serious illness in the mid-1890's.
His artwork during this ten year period provides an intimate window into his healing, as he moves from macabre-themed charcoal sketches to mythological and floral works bathed in luminous color. Though unhappy for most of his life up to that time, the illness transformed him into a more joyful and optimistic person. Some art historians credit the birth of his second son Ari in 1889 as being an important factor in Redon's eventual recovery.
Notes
The two works by Odilon Redon which follow illustrate the transformation of his work following an illness and a spiritual crisis in the 1890's. The creation of the first piece closely followed the loss of his first child, Jean, in 1886.
The heart has its reasons. 1887. Museum of Modern Art, New York.The title is from Blaise Pascal's Pensées: Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît pas/The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing.
Beatrice. 1897. Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco. Beatrice is the legendary muse and great love of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. This is an account of a dream which followed his seeing her for the first time:
. . . In his arms it seemed to me that a person was sleeping, covered only with a crimson cloth; upon whom looking very attentively, I knew that it was the Lady of the Salutation, who had deigned the day before to salute me. And he who held her held also in his hand a thing that was burning in flames, and he said to me, "Behold thy heart."
