Odilon Redon’s Noirs are difficult to discern, to completely grasp. It’s hard
to fully understand them, to interpret them in any satisfying way. You know they come
from a fruitful imagination, they’re fascinating, but I have a hard time
analyzing these images because I find it difficult to truly understand them.
They come so deeply from imagination that what these images are can be hard to define.
The indeterminate often comes up when Redon himself talks about his art. “My
drawings inspire and cannot be defined. They place us,
as music does, in the world of the ambiguous and the indeterminate.”
This world of the indeterminate which Redon introduces us to is a world engulfed in
darkness. It exposes disturbing scenes, impossible creatures and eerie objects.
It’s not too far off from Redon’s Cyclops,
which I already made a video about. His Cyclops was made during the second part of his career,
when he finally turned to colour to give life to his work. But here, Redon sticks
(almost) exclusively to black. Redon’s Noirs literally translates to Redon’s Blacks in French.
So what characterizes this series is the fact that it’s devoid of colour. The use of charcoal,
most importantly, contributes to the ephemerality of the images, to what makes them indeterminate.
The darkness and the fogginess of the images create an uncertainty,
the kind of uncertainty that keeps us alert and watchful.
But this darkness and fogginess also create a very distinct feeling,
a feeling that makes these relatable. They feel like dreams.
There’s nothing more indeterminate and blurry than dreams. The odd can make an
appearance out of nowhere, the most improbable situations might arise and, a moment later,
the dream is completely forgotten with only a foggy image to serve as a vague memory.
However, the medium and its colour, or lack of colour, is not what contributes the most
to the dream-like quality of these images. The subjects of these images are what relates them
most to dreams. Smiling spiders, crying spiders, egg person, plant person… These
subjects, which are combinations of different elements into one creature,
are what makes these images so appealing. They come straight from Redon’s imagination.
And the fact that Redon used his imagination was quite original at the end of the 19th century. He
condoned the “narrowness of the realist theories which confine art and refuse it access to its most
fertile sources: thought, inspiration, genius—in a word—and all that it reveals to us.” To him,
a lot of artistic potential was wasted by depicting only the material world.
"My originality consists in bringing to life,
in a human way, improbable beings and making them live according to the laws and probability,
by putting - as far as possible - the logic of the visible at the service of the invisible.”
Redon gave life, through his work, to the invisible: ideas, creations,
fantasies… He undeniably paved the path for surrealists, who would
push even further the exploration of the unconscious through art.
This video was made for Halloween because Redon’s Noirs are, at least at first glance,
undeniably spooky. But while doing the research for this video, I came across
this quote by Gauguin saying: “I do not see why it is said that Odilon Redon paints
monsters. They are imaginary beings. He is a dreamer, an imaginative spirit.”
And Gauguin might be right here. These aren’t necessarily monsters. We don’t see them doing
monstrous things, as we would in a Goya, which Redon took much inspiration from.
These beings just look unfamiliar, they are unknown. These aren’t necessarily nightmares,
they’re just dreams. Redon might make us realize that we aren’t afraid of nightmares,
but of dreams themselves because they’re so unpredictable, so unknown, so indeterminate.
And the indeterminate can be scary, it can be unsettling, but what Redon is doing here,
I believe, is trying to reconcile us with what we fear, but perhaps shouldn’t: our imagination.