R
Happy Halloween! The stars and planets must be in alignment, because the letter we’re up on fits perfectly with a very Halloween-appropriate artist. It’s thanks to Prep Lad, who brought him to my attention, that I can bring him to yours - they tend to only put one or two of this artist’s images in all the standard survey books, so it was Prep Lad who said, “Ooh! I know the perfect artist for a Halloween entry!” Therefore,
is for Odilon Redon.
Odilon Redon is generally considered a Symbolist by art historians, although the Surrealists considered him a progenitor of their movement. Symbolists trafficked in dream-images, wanting intensely personal images to represent internal struggles, not traditional archetypes. Gustav Klimt and William Blake were fellow Symbolists artists, as was Edvard Munch and his famous The Scream. There was a corresponding Symbolist movement in literature, primary via Belgian and French writers, and the two groups did work closely together. Redon, however, can’t easily be pigeonholed into one movement, as his style changed radically over his lifetime. By the last years of his life, he was painting flower still-lifes, lovely and entirely distant from the disquieting and very Symbolist images I’m going to show today.
Spirit of the Forest, 1880
The Smiling Spider 1881
Like music, my drawings transport us to the ambiguous world of the indeterminate.
À Edgar Poe (L’oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l’infini)
(The Eye, like a strange balloon, moves towards infinity)
1882
His earlier images are purely black and white, and he only made the move into richly colored oils in the 1880s.
Les Tenebres
The Cyclops 1914
Pegasus
is for Odilon Redon.
Odilon Redon is generally considered a Symbolist by art historians, although the Surrealists considered him a progenitor of their movement. Symbolists trafficked in dream-images, wanting intensely personal images to represent internal struggles, not traditional archetypes. Gustav Klimt and William Blake were fellow Symbolists artists, as was Edvard Munch and his famous The Scream. There was a corresponding Symbolist movement in literature, primary via Belgian and French writers, and the two groups did work closely together. Redon, however, can’t easily be pigeonholed into one movement, as his style changed radically over his lifetime. By the last years of his life, he was painting flower still-lifes, lovely and entirely distant from the disquieting and very Symbolist images I’m going to show today.
Spirit of the Forest, 1880
The Smiling Spider 1881
Like music, my drawings transport us to the ambiguous world of the indeterminate.
À Edgar Poe (L’oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l’infini)
(The Eye, like a strange balloon, moves towards infinity)
1882
His earlier images are purely black and white, and he only made the move into richly colored oils in the 1880s.
Les Tenebres
The Cyclops 1914
Pegasus