Lumiere

My latest gallery expedition was to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, to view the Lumiere Lithographs by French symbolist Odilon Redon (1840-1916). With a good 1.5 hour journey each way, I made sure that I soaked up as much richness as I could from the exhibition, as well as the rest of the collections on show.

About the artist. Well, as part of the avant-garde movement, Redon rejected naturalism and opted to embrace the mysterious, subjective and evocative in his works. They were designed to inspire and place us in the ambiguous world of the indeterminate. These works were created out of a response to the medium (lithography) and use a juxtaposition of light and dark to stir emotion and create depth.

For me, the most compelling aspect of this artist was how he embraced literature (In this exhibition predominantly The Temptation of St Anthony, by Gustave Flaubert), and inspired by evocative descriptors, he creates something in direct response, capturing the essence, but also leaving further interpretation for the viewer, so that one is invited to be taken as far as the imagination allows. Intriguingly he brings together the improbable and probable and invites the viewer to add in the final detail. I drew a few of the lithographs that particularly struck my interest from both aesthetic and technical aspects. As usual, I've included them here:

The old woman, La Tentation de Saint-Antoine, 1896, plate 19

I really liked the movement in this print, the stark contrast and how he has evoked the deathly old woman described in the text. The black light in her eyes are described as a symbol of the Devil and her skeletal body hints at her impending transformation into the figure of death.

And the eyes without a head were floating like molluscs,

La Tentation de Saint-Antoine, 1896, plate 13.

It was noted here that Roden visited the Museum of Natural History to study human embryos, foetuses and defective newborns. You can see this study in the images, although knowing that they are fictional creatures. It is also interesting to note that he was closely influenced by embryologist Geoffrey Sain-Hilare and evolutionary theorist Ernst Haeckel who believed that the human embryo went through a fish or animal stage. What I loved about this work was how the seemingly separate floating eyes were exchanging gazes and were all connected by soft swirling lines, as a sort of comradeship.

The beasts of the sea, round like leather bottles,

La Tentation de Saint-Antoine, 1896, plate 22.

It was quoted by Redon that the arabesque lines showcased in this print was used to arouse 'any number of fantasies' in the mind of the beholder, limited only by the sensitivity of the imagination.

Somewhere there must be primordial shapes whose bodies are only images,

La Tentation de Saint-Antoine, 1896, plate 4.

It was the philosophical ties that pulled me to this particular print. With this indeterminate figure Redon responds to text relating to the philosophy of Schopenhauer, who believed that aesthetic experiences allowed the beholder to achieve pure mental enjoyment and temporary freedom from the Will or the thing in itself.

I plunged into solitude. I dwelt in the tree behind me.

La Tentation de Saint-Antoine, 1896, plate 9.

I just loved the layered textures and tones of ink used to create the firm tree base, but at the same time suggests a canopy of towering branches and deep dark wood lurking behind. It was noted that here Redon recalled his youth, commenting that 'woods with century-old trees were places of supernatural tales where witches still existed'. The anthropomorphic quality of the tree, makes you feel like the tree has a gaping mouth ready to swallow anything in its path.