November 9th, 2024

Happy Saturday! It’s been two weeks and longer than I planned since the last issue but it feels good to get back to this 🙂 my step-son’s surgery was a success, despite some complications that kept him in the hospital for 7 days. His recovery at home has been steady-ish, although once the medication to control the nerve ending pain was over his appetite plummeted and the pain ramped up again. He’s back on that medication now and we’re monitoring things closely.

This week we’re spotlighting a French artist with a beautifully soft style. I hope you enjoy learning about him.

Artist Spotlight - Odilon Redon (1840-1916)

Career

Odilon Redon, born on April 20, 1840, in Bordeaux, France into a wealthy family, yet his childhood was marked by isolation and illness. His mother, a devoutly religious woman, sent him to live with an uncle in the countryside from a young age, separating him from his family and social life in Bordeaux. This isolation fostered a unique relationship with nature, filling his imagination with scenes of trees, flowers, and animals. From early on, his artistic inclinations were evident, and by the age of fifteen, he was studying drawing in Bordeaux under Stanislas Gorin. However, his father, who wished Redon to pursue a career in architecture, discouraged him from art as a profession.

The pivotal moment in Redon’s early career came in 1864 when he met the artist Rodolphe Bresdin, who became his mentor. Bresdin, known for his dark, intricate engravings, taught Redon techniques that shaped his early style, especially his lithographs and charcoal drawings, known as "noirs." These early works depict mysterious, shadowy forms and haunting, dreamlike scenes filled with grotesque creatures and ghostly figures. Redon’s skill in capturing the subtleties of light and dark was exceptional, but his subject matter set him apart even further. Fascinated by the dark side of human nature, dreams, and mysticism, his work attracted only a niche audience and little acclaim, but it established his reputation as a visionary artist willing to probe the unknown.

The late 1880s marked a significant turning point in Redon’s life and career. After the birth of his son Ari in 1889, he began a gradual but profound transformation in his work. Moving away from the monochromatic "noirs," he started to experiment with pastels and oils, bringing vivid colors into his previously somber, moody world. This shift wasn’t merely a change in technique; it was a reinvention of his artistic vision. While his earlier work in black and white evoked an eerie, haunting quality, his use of color opened a new path toward transcendence and luminosity, where flowers, mythical figures, and angelic beings emerged in radiant hues.

He became closely associated with the Symbolist movement, which was gaining momentum in the 1880s and 1890s. Symbolism, unlike realism or impressionism, was rooted in exploring dreams, spirituality, and mythology. Redon found inspiration in literary figures such as Edgar Allan Poe, whose dark and surreal worlds mirrored his own inner landscapes, as well as in the writings of Charles Baudelaire and Stéphane Mallarmé. His new work resonated with Symbolist artists and writers who saw in Redon a shared vision of art as a means to delve into the subconscious. Pieces like The Cyclops (circa 1914) and Saint John (1892) embody this mystical quality, using vibrant, almost hallucinogenic colors to depict fantastic beings and biblical visions that seemed to hover between worlds, inviting viewers to immerse themselves in the imagination's limitless potential.

Redon’s colorful flower paintings also became a distinctive part of his repertoire during this time. These weren’t simple studies of flora but rather symbolic representations of spiritual and emotional states. His flowers, imbued with radiance and strange beauty, suggested a world where nature and the divine intertwined, breaking traditional boundaries between physical and metaphysical reality. Redon’s reputation grew, and he began to attract a following among avant-garde collectors and critics. His works gained particular admiration from Paul Gauguin and the Nabis group, who saw in Redon a mentor and forerunner of expressive color and form.

In the last years of his life, he reached the pinnacle of his style, combining the mystery and darkness of his early works with the intense color and spiritual transcendence of his later paintings. His personal life became more stable and prosperous, and he moved in circles of artistic and intellectual society, earning acclaim for his unique vision. Redon also began to explore themes of Eastern philosophy, particularly Buddhism, which brought a serene, contemplative quality to his work. Paintings like Buddha (circa 1906) reflect this philosophical influence, merging his fascination with inner states and mystical thought with his own Catholic upbringing, creating images that resonate with spiritual universality.

His work continued to defy categorization. Even as he shifted entirely to color, he retained the surreal and symbolic qualities that marked his early career. However, as he became more widely known, Redon avoided the mainstream acclaim and prestige that many of his contemporaries sought. He was content with a smaller, devoted audience who understood and appreciated the deeply introspective nature of his art.

Redon passed away in 1916, leaving a legacy that would influence a wide range of artists across movements. His impact was felt in the Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist movements, where artists like André Masson and even Joan Miró cited Redon’s exploration of dreams and the subconscious as foundational to their work. His ability to traverse both shadow and light, despair and joy, created a body of work that is both haunting and hopeful, bridging the world of dark dreams with the vividness of color and life.

Contributions to the Art World

Redon was one of the first artists to focus on inner realities rather than external appearances, breaking away from the dominant naturalistic trends of his time. His work is often seen as a key part of the Symbolist movement, which emphasized the depiction of emotions, dreams, and myths rather than the physical world. Symbolism represented a shift from depicting the world as it is to portraying it as it is experienced on an emotional or psychological level. Redon’s fascination with the mystical, the mysterious, and the supernatural—reflected in works like his noirs—paved the way for Symbolism’s embrace of the esoteric, leading to its popularity in both visual arts and literature. This influence extended beyond France, impacting artists and writers across Europe who sought to transcend the material world and explore deeper realms of human experience.

Although he predated the Surrealist movement by several decades, his work foreshadowed many of its core themes. His early charcoal and lithograph works, filled with fantastical creatures, dreamlike imagery, and a haunting atmosphere, resonate with the subconscious explorations that later defined Surrealism. Surrealist artists like André Breton, Max Ernst, and Joan Miró admired Redon’s work for its ability to depict a world beyond rationality and his use of dream imagery to express the unknown aspects of the psyche. His art demonstrated that an artist could access a “hidden world” through imagination, dreams, and personal introspection, influencing Surrealism’s foundation and ethos.

Redon’s legacy lies in his profound commitment to exploring the unseen, subconscious layers of existence. His deeply personal and psychological approach to art encouraged a broader understanding of what art could be and what subjects it could address. His willingness to engage with abstract, subconscious, and symbolic themes invited artists to see beyond the literal and enter into the emotional, psychological, and spiritual realms. In many ways, Redon pioneered a form of introspective art that inspired later movements such as Expressionism and Surrealism, which placed personal experience and inner emotions at the center of their creative processes.

Style

For his early noirs, Redon relied heavily on charcoal and lithography, both of which enabled him to achieve rich gradations of tone and intense contrasts. Charcoal gave his works a velvety darkness, while lithography allowed him to replicate his images for a broader audience. His skill with lithography, particularly, demonstrated his mastery of lines and textures, which he used to express various states of mind and emotional intensity. He could depict soft, subtle shadows in one piece and stark, jarring contrasts in another, depending on the mood he wished to convey.

His foray into color in the late 1880’s coincided with his discovery of pastels and oil paints, both of which allowed him to explore a more luminous and ethereal aesthetic. Pastels, with their soft, powdery texture and vibrant hues, became one of Redon’s preferred mediums in this period. He used them to create velvety textures and glowing colors that gave his works a sense of otherworldly beauty. By layering and blending pastels, he achieved a rich, saturated effect that transformed his compositions from the dark introspections of his early career to bright, spiritual visions.

Redon’s creative process was deeply introspective and meditative, often beginning with drawings in charcoal or sketches that captured his initial vision. His process was iterative; he would start with an idea or theme, often inspired by literature, mythology, or his own dreams, and gradually refine it through sketches and studies before moving on to more finished works. His sketches reveal his fascination with form and expression, often capturing exaggerated features or strange juxtapositions that allowed him to explore psychological and emotional states.

Influences and Lessons

While Redon’s early works were largely monochromatic, he found inspiration in the vibrant, expressive colors of Eugène Delacroix, the celebrated Romantic painter. Delacroix’s use of intense color to convey emotion and drama resonated with Redon, particularly as he transitioned to pastels and oil painting later in his career. Delacroix’s belief that color could serve as a vehicle for feeling and spiritual depth influenced Redon’s approach to his later works, where color became a central element in evoking transcendence and emotional intensity. Redon admired Delacroix’s Romantic ideals and his dedication to depicting the inner life and the sublime, which influenced Redon’s own symbolic and mystical inclinations.

He was also heavily influenced by the works of Edgar Allan Poe, whose tales of mystery and the macabre mirrored Redon’s own interest in the darker aspects of human experience. Redon illustrated several works inspired by Poe, whose themes of horror, madness, and the supernatural resonated with his imagination. These illustrations helped him explore the nightmarish and surreal realms of the mind, which became central to his early noirs. The American writer’s gothic sensibility and use of psychological horror inspired Redon to delve into similar themes, allowing him to explore the darker dimensions of the subconscious.

Redon’s journey from the monochrome charcoal drawings of his youth to the vibrant, spiritual canvases of his later life mirrors a personal evolution marked by resilience and imagination. In each phase, Redon managed to capture an inner world rarely explored by his contemporaries, one where beauty and mystery coexist, inviting viewers to ponder the unseen and the unknown. His art, suspended between nightmare and dream, remains a testament to his belief that true beauty lies not in outward appearance but in the hidden depths of the soul.

Style Representation

Collectors Corner - zolfaqqari & Ransom Wells

Final Thoughts

That’s a wrap for this week. It’s getting colder and we’ve had a lot of rain the past few days so I’m looking forward to whipping up some warm soup tonight. It’s been quite the eventful week here in the States and I hope everyone is focusing on the positive side of things. Whatever the future holds, we’ll make it through together.

As always, if you enjoyed this edition I would really appreciate if you shared it. Just hit the share button below. And if you’re not following me on X yet, I’d love to follow you back. I’m also on Warpcast!

On that note, I’ll leave you with a quote celebrating the orange and yellow’s that are painting nature:

Enjoy your weekend, friend!

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