Beyond The Visible: The Art Of Odilon Redon

by Jodi Hauptman, Odilon Redon (Artist)

Caught between description and dream, the felt and the imagined, French artist Odilon Redon, whose career bridged the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, transformed the natural world into nightmarish visions and bizarre fantasies. Closely allied with the Symbolist movement, Redon offered his own interpretations of literary, biblical and mythological subjects; created a universe of strange hybrid creatures; and presented landscape in a singular way: we see grinning disembodied teeth, smiling spiders, melancholic floating faces, winged chariots, unfamiliar plant life, and velvety black or colored swirls of atmosphere. With a recent gift from the Ian Woodner family, The Museum of Modern Art is now the site of the most significant body of the artist's work outside France, and this book will showcase the full range of Redon's varied oeuvre--charcoal "noirs," luminous pastels, richly textured canvases, literary collaborations and experiments in printmaking--and will illuminate the hold his particular kind of Modernism has had on both twentieth-century and contemporary artists.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

256 pages, Hardcover

First published October 15, 2005

About the author

Jodi Hauptman is assistant professor in the Department of History of Art at the University of Delaware.

Her book Stargazing in the Cinema was the winner of the 2001 Charles C. Eldredge Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in American Art

Reviews

[Eadweard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two insightful essays about his development and influences. Time is also dedicated to his lithographs/noirs. Sadly, not much is said about his post-1900 works which I find to be my favorites, his The Cyclops, Birth of Venus and Butterflies are some of my favorite paintings ever.

Nowadays he seems to have lost popularity, that's a pity. I personally rate him above the Impressionists.

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the best Redon book, but it'll have to do, as the one I really want is now a collectible; but this one has the added advantage to me that I actually saw the show in NY and have some memory of what the charcoals and lithographs actually look like.

Redon was a dreamy guy with a dreamy name and his art rarely touches on the "real" world (quotes added for people who don't consider the worlds of the imagination real). His colorful, ambiguous, revery-inducing pastels are probably his best and best known works, but the dark charcoals and lithographs (which this book mostly features) are filled with worlds within worlds of shadows, the subtler qualities of which are unfortunately lost in reproduction.

There's also something eerie about Redon, especially in his human figures, when there even are any. Not only are they terribly stiff and flat, they are rarely if ever looking at the viewer. Most are either in profile or looking down or averted in some way. And none are ever making any noise. One even has two fingers over his mouth indicating silence. These qualities of his figures emphasizes the elusive inner world nature of the works.