Odilon Redon

Early Life and Artistic Beginnings

Odilon Redon, born Bertrand-Jean Redon in 1840, was a French artist who straddled the line between the 19th and 20th centuries. His life story reads like a novel, full of twists and turns that shaped his unique artistic vision.

As a child, Redon suffered from epilepsy, which led to him being shipped off to his uncle’s vineyard in the Medoc region. Talk about a silver lining - this exile to the countryside sparked his lifelong fascination with nature and the fantastical. Picture a young Redon wandering through the vineyards, his mind buzzing with strange creatures and dreamlike landscapes.

At 15, Redon started formal art lessons with Stanislas Gorin, who introduced him to the works of Delacroix. This early exposure to Romanticism left an indelible mark on Redon’s artistic psyche. But life had other plans for him - his father wanted him to become an architect. Spoiler alert: that didn’t pan out. Redon failed his entrance exams to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Talk about a blessing in disguise!

The Dark Period: Noirs and Lithographs

Redon’s early career was marked by what he called his “noirs” - charcoal drawings and lithographs that explored the darker corners of his imagination. These works were like fever dreams put to paper, filled with floating eyeballs, strange hybrid creatures, and disembodied heads.

Take “The Smiling Spider” (1881), for instance. This creepy-crawly with a human face is enough to give anyone the heebie-jeebies. But look closer, and you’ll see a mischievous grin that seems to say, “I know something you don’t.” It’s this blend of the unsettling and the whimsical that makes Redon’s work so captivating.

Redon’s noirs weren’t just about shock value. They were his way of diving headfirst into the murky waters of the subconscious. As he put it, “My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined.” In other words, Redon was playing jazz with charcoal and lithography stones.

The Color Revolution

In the 1890s, Redon’s art underwent a dramatic transformation. It was as if someone had suddenly cranked up the color saturation on his artistic vision. Gone were the somber blacks and grays, replaced by a riot of vibrant hues.

What sparked this change? Some say it was a religious awakening, others point to personal happiness (his second son, Ari, was born in 1889). Whatever the reason, Redon embraced color with the enthusiasm of a kid in a candy store.

His floral still lifes from this period are a feast for the eyes. Take “Bouquet of Flowers” (c. 1905) - it’s like someone tossed a handful of jewels onto the canvas. The flowers seem to float in an otherworldly space, more like a dream of flowers than actual blooms.

Symbolism and the Power of Suggestion

Redon was a key figure in the Symbolist movement, which rejected the idea that art should simply represent the visible world. Instead, Symbolists sought to express abstract ideas and emotions through their work.

For Redon, this meant creating art that was open to interpretation. He once said, “The only aim of my art is to produce within the spectator a sort of diffuse but powerful affinity with the obscure world of the indeterminate.” In other words, he wanted his art to be a Rorschach test for the soul.

Take his painting “The Cyclops” (1914). At first glance, it’s a strange scene - a one-eyed giant peering over a hill at a sleeping nude figure. But look deeper, and you might see a meditation on voyeurism, or the relationship between the conscious and unconscious mind. The beauty of Redon’s work is that there’s no “right” interpretation.

Influences and Legacy

Redon’s art was a melting pot of influences. He was inspired by the Romantic paintings of Delacroix, the poetry of Baudelaire, and even the scientific theories of Darwin. His friendship with the botanist Armand Clavaud sparked an interest in the natural world that would influence his art throughout his life.

In turn, Redon’s work had a profound impact on later artists. The Surrealists, in particular, saw him as a kindred spirit. His ability to blend the real and the imaginary, the beautiful and the grotesque, paved the way for artists like Salvador Dalí and René Magritte.

Even artists who seem worlds apart from Redon’s dreamy symbolism felt his influence. Henri Matisse, for instance, credited Redon’s use of color with inspiring his own vibrant palette.

The Man Behind the Dreams

Despite the fantastical nature of his art, Redon was, by all accounts, a pretty down-to-earth guy. He was happily married to Camille Falte, a Creole woman from Réunion, and they had two sons (though tragically, their first son died in infancy).

Redon was also a bit of a Renaissance man. He was an accomplished violinist and even performed publicly on occasion. He once said, “Music is a nocturnal art, the art of the dream.” It’s not hard to see how this love of music influenced the lyrical, dreamlike quality of his visual art.

The Enduring Appeal of Redon’s Art

More than a century after his death, Redon’s art continues to captivate and perplex viewers. His work sits at the crossroads of so many artistic movements - Romanticism, Symbolism, even the beginnings of Surrealism - yet it remains uniquely his own.

Redon’s art invites us to do more than just look - it asks us to dream, to imagine, to lose ourselves in a world where the boundaries between reality and fantasy blur. In an age of information overload and constant distraction, perhaps that’s why Redon’s enigmatic visions continue to resonate.

As we gaze at a Redon painting, we’re reminded of the power of the imagination, the beauty of the mysterious, and the endless possibilities that lie just beyond the veil of the everyday world. In Redon’s art, as in life, the most profound truths often lie in the spaces between what we can see and what we can only imagine.