Odilon Redon (1840-1916)

Art, for Redon, was what poetry was for his friend Stéphane Mallarmé: 'the expression, through human language reduced to its essential rhythm, of the mysterious meaning of the various aspects of existence. In this way it authenticates our sojourn on this planet and constitutes our sole intellectual challenge' (Mallarmé to Léo d'Orfer, 1884). Influenced to a large extent by Mallarmé's symbolism, Redon creates pictures which 'do not define themselves; they place us, like music, in the ambiguous world of the indeterminate' (Redon, quoted in A. Wildenstein, Odilon Redon, Catalogue raisonné, vol. I, Paris, 1992, p. 145).

Before 1900 Redon made drawings almost exclusively in black and white; afterward he began to focus on paintings and pastels in sensuous colour. Many of his late works in colour took nature’s small beauties, such as butterflies, seashells, and flowers, as objects of contemplation and presented them with a fantastic intensity. Redon was a Symbolist; he believed that art could transcend the everyday and open onto a marvellous world of the mind. Around 1905 he spoke of the painter’s task as a privileged one: 'Painting consists in using a special sense, an innate sense for composing a beautiful substance. To do as nature does: create diamonds, gold, sapphires, agates, precious metal, silk, flesh: it is a gift of delicious sensuality.' (S. F. Eisenman, The Temptation of Saint Redon, Chicago, 1992).