Odilon Redon: Prince of Dreams, 1840-1916
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Graphic Design
Odilon Redon: Prince of Dreams, 1840-1916 Details
From Publishers Weekly As essential source for scholars and lovers of Redon, this marvelously illustrated biographical-critical study catalogs a traveling retrospective exhibit of the French symbolist's works. Drawing on recently released archival material, an international team of scholars led by exhibition curator Druick present evidence that Redon suffered from childhood epilepsy, which his parents attempted to conceal. Feeling unloved and rejected by his Creole mother, Redon, raised apart from his siblings, married Camille Falte, a nurturing, practical Creole from the island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean, a telegraph operator's daughter whom Redon, a rebel against his bourgeois class, idealized as a "daughter of the people." Redon's affiliation with Romantic artists, his friendships with Gauguin, Huysmans and Gide, and his role as mentor of Nabis Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard are explored in a major work that features many hitherto-unseen pictures from private collections among the 550 illustrations (including 160 color plates). Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. Read more From Booklist Redon's art infuses us with wonder, pleasure, and hope. He survived a bewildering and painfully lonely childhood to become a productive, fulfilled, and successful artist--a transformation chronicled in his work, which evolved from stark iconographic depictions of isolation and vulnerability to vibrant images of luminous fecundity. Redon (1840-1916) was an exceptional draftsman, lithographer, pastelist, painter, and decorator, as well as a late bloomer and a wholly original thinker who found inspiration in diverse forms of art and literature and in the revolutionary realms of psychology and science. His work has been sadly neglected since his first retrospective 100 years ago, but his second retrospective has proved to be an exciting and revelatory event, as evidenced by this superb volume. Under the direction of Douglas W. Druick, a curator at the Art Institute of Chicago, a select group of art historians carefully and intuitively trace Redon's fascinating personal history and extraordinary artistic achievements. Nearly 600 reproductions, many of works hitherto unknown to the public, support the text and delight the eye. Redon's compelling work bridged the centuries, forming a golden chain of rich symbolism, glorious romance, gentle mysticism, and sensual celebration. Donna Seaman Read more From Kirkus Reviews Meticulous research by an international team of scholars, complemented by magnificently reproduced illustrations, creates an impressive portrait of the fin-de-siŠcle French artist Odilon Redon (18401916). Although Redon was once ranked with artists like Seurat and Gauguin, he has lately received less attention than his peers--a situation that the current retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago, which this volume explicates, should help redress. Redon is best remembered today for his visionary monochromatic prints and drawings. Among his most frequently exhibited pictures are such fantastic dream images as an eye set within an ascending balloon and a giant smiling spider poised at a jaunty angle. Many public collections also display colorful pastel drawings of flower bouquets from the latter part of his career. It has proven difficult to explain his work according to the grand narratives of art history. Redon was neither an impressionist nor a modernist; even the label of symbolist threatens to assimilate his works to literature and philosophy rather than grant them the independence that their singularity demands. The authors, led by the Art Institute's Druick, recontextualize Redon by carefully unraveling his relationship to the romantic esthetics, spiritualist theologies, and art-market imperatives of his time, while offering a convincing psychoanalytic account of how his art reflects his unhappy childhood, his difficult apprenticeship, and his struggle to emerge from the shadow of his talented elder brother. Dark clouds and landscapes from his early life mark his noirs, they argue, but dissolve to reveal the no less mysterious, but finally joyous, light and color of his last decades. Many heretofore unknown full-color images brought to light by their investigations give a fuller sense of the development of themes in this late period. A superb art book for aficionados of occult ideas, of the graphic arts, or simply of striking images and effusive colors. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Read more
Reviews
French artist Odilon Redon is famous for both his dark lithographs (“noirs”), featuring such spooky images as floating eyeballs and grinning spiders, and his later pastels of flowers and religious or mythological subjects. He is perhaps most closely associated with the late-nineteenth-century Symbolist art movement, though he himself identified with this movement only for a relatively short period. Some of his work prefigures the work of the Surrealists and modern fantasy or Goth artists.This art book of Redon’s work is one of those coffee-table books that could double as the coffee table; at about 12” by 14” and a couple of inches thick, it’s rather a pain to manipulate. As an art book, however, it’s beautiful, giving a wide selection of Redon’s work throughout his career. All the pieces that were in color to start with are in color here, and some (though not very many) are given a full-page display.The text, by a variety of authors, is extensive—perhaps too much so. It tells a great deal about Redon’s own feelings about his art at different times, critics’ reactions to it, his exhibitions and sales, how his art fitted (or didn’t fit) with the artistic and political ideas popular in France at different periods, etc., with numerous quotes. I think most readers, like myself, will find it pretty tedious unless they are awfully, awfully interested in or curious about Redon. Just browsing the art may work better.