Odilon Redon was the child of wealthy French slavers who made their fortune in the Louisiana slave trade during the early 1800s. At a young age he began working in charcoal and developing his artistic talents. He grew up in France, and eventually joined the French army to fight in the Franco-Prussian war in 1870. After the war, the works he produced hint at the trauma perpetrated in his bloodline as well as the trauma he experienced in that short, bloody war.
His faces are full of delirium, fear, and sorrow. They peek out from insect bodies, delicately dancing across his page, buried in shadows and begging to be seen. Eyes are everywhere, looking up into the sky and pleading for the meaning behind their suffering. Because the meaning couldn’t be the money made at their expense, both soldiers and slaves. They look up, almost as if they’re trying to float away from their reality.
Redon was known for his macabre, charcoal works, even though later in life he branched out to work in more vibrant colors and pastels and painted wealthy people’s dining rooms. I’d like to think his mind stayed in this place, no matter what came from his brush.
My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined.
– Odilon Redon
