Noirs by Odilon Redon

Odilon Redon self-protraitOdilon Redon (1840 – 1916) french printmaker, draughtsman and painter.An individualist who believed in the superiority of the imagination over observation of nature, rejected the Realism and Impressionism of his contemporaries in favor of a more personal artistic vision.Born as Bertrand-Jean Redon, he acquired the nickname "Odilon" from his mother, Odile. Redon started drawing as a child, and at the age of ten he was awarded a drawing prize at school. Aged fifteen, he began the formal study of drawing, but on the insistence of his father he changed to architecture. His failure to pass the entrance exams at Paris’ École des Beaux-Arts ended any plans for a career as an architect, although he briefly studied painting there under Jean-Léon Gérôme in 1864. (His younger brother Gaston Redon would become a noted architect.)Back home in his native Bordeaux, he took up sculpture, and Rodolphe Bresdin instructed him in etching and lithography. His artistic career was interrupted in 1870 when he joined the army to serve in the Franco-Prussian War.At the end of the war, he moved to Paris, working almost exclusively in charcoal and lithography. He called his visionary works, conceived in shades of black, his "Noirs". It would not be until 1878 that his work gained any recognition with Guardian Spirit of the Waters, and he published his first album of lithographs, titled Dans le Rêve, in 1879. Still, Redon remained relatively unknown until the appearance in 1884 of a cult novel by Joris-Karl Huysmans titled, À rebours (Against Nature).In the 1890s, pastel and oils became his favored media, and he produced no more noirs after 1900. In 1899, he exhibited with the Nabis at Durand-Ruel's. In 1903 he was awarded the Legion of Honor.He became a celebrated figure in fin-de-siècle Paris, greatly admired by artists and writers of the Symbolist movement with whom he shared an enthusiasm for the fantastic, mystical, and sublime forces found beneath the surface of everyday life.He was greatly inspired by such authors as Edgar Allan Poe and Gustave Flaubert, whose unusual sensibilities were well suited to the artist's own. Redon was so moved by Flaubert's 1874 prose poem The Temptation of Saint Anthony that he created three separate projects based on it.His popularity increased when a catalogue of etchings and lithographs was published by André Mellerio in 1913 and that same year, he was given the largest single representation at the New York Armory Show.Redon died on July 6, 1916.****À rebours, chapter Vsources: moma.org; wikipedia.comGuardian Spirit of the WatersThe Crying Spider, 1881The Smiling Spider, 1891Spirit of the Forest, 1880Cactus Man, 1881The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity.Chimera 1883Head of Orpheus Floating in the Water 1881Swamp flowerThe Raven, 1882From the Cycle "The Temptation of Saint Anthony": Anthony: What Is the Point of All This? The Devil. There Is No Point! , 1896The originsHead of a martyr, 1877Many Different People Inhabit the Lands of the OceansThe Egg, 1885