Title: L’Apparition
Artist: Odilon Redon (French, 1840-1916)
Medium: charcoal on paper
Dimensions: 44.5 x 33 cm
Description
“Black should be respected. Nothing prostitutes it. It does not please the eye and does not awaken sensuality. It is the agent of the spirit much more than the splendid color of the palette or of the prism.” So wrote Odilon Redon, who termed his drawings in the smoky, velvety blacks of charcoal, chalk, and Conté crayon his noirs. As noted, Redon embraced lithography and charcoal drawing amid a rising interest in the graphic arts, yet in his noirs he pushed black further than his contemporaries, stretching color—or non-color—to its limits. “Charcoal, that light material that a breath could take away, allowed me the rapidity of gestation amenable to the docile and easy expression of feeling.” These black drawings and lithographs built his reputation; he initially feared collectors would reject the colored pastels and paintings that later dominated his work.
The subjects of his noirs are sui generis. The artist wrote circa 1894: “There is a certain style of drawing that the imagination has liberated from the embarrassing concern for real details… My originality consists in giving human life to unlikely creatures according to the laws of probability, putting the logic of the visible at the service of the invisible.” J.-K. Huysmans described Redon’s 1881 drawing exhibition: “Here is the nightmare transported into art… imagine somnambulist figures, twisted with fear.”
In L’Apparition, a gaunt nude young woman glimpses a mask-like face in the dark, a portent with an expectant gaze. “My drawings inspire and do
Image Download
Image Dimensions: 769 x 1024 pixels
Image Size: 108 KB
Image Format: JPG
Print Resolution: 96 dpi
Download Format: ZIP Archive
License: Public Domain, Free for Commercial Use
