A Short Video on Odilon Redon I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the relationship between abstraction and representation and I’m very interested in work that seems to collapse the two. (Marlene Dumas and Willem de Kooning come to mind.) Redon’s work seems to anticipate this somehow. It’s so-called Symbolist content is of less interest to me than the atavistic, barnacle-like fields of color and the abject biomorphic forms but I was intrigued to find out that Joris-Karl Huysmans’ book À rebours (Against Nature) was largely responsible for bringing Redon widespread attention. Redon is, of course, not fashionable in the art world but I suppose that is part of the appeal for me — to look again at what I’m not “supposed” to look at, to see if there is anything of value there. I also find myself drawn to the unfashionable medium of pastel as well. Many of Redon’s works were done using pastel and I noticed that there is a session at CAA this year devoted to pastel. Something to think about anyway.

Posted: December 27th, 2008 | Author: Lisa | Filed under: video | No Comments »

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