What Do You See? The Collection of Sidney Rothberg, Part I

Odilon Redon developed a unique visual poetry during his life, simple in appearance but intimately linked to his inner self. It relied on certain codes and iconography which made it easy for the viewer to recognize his enigmatic world almost immediately. A pure product of his century–at the crossroads between science and mysticism–he grew to be the leader of the Symbolists, a late trend which was not, at first, unanimously shared, both in literary (Mallarmé, Huysmans) and artistic (Bernard, Duchamp) circles. He demonstrated a singular sensitivity full of mystery, from his early Noirs, to bolder explorations of color that he first laid on pastel, then oil.Redon was driven more so from inner visions than inspired by reality; in that sense, the large number of still lifes that he executed, whether cut or arranged flowers, sometimes treated as motifs other times as the main subject of his works, represent an important part of his work, and are a key to understanding his overarching artistic message. According to Alec Wildenstein, “a beautiful symbol of peace and renewal, the flower illuminates Redon’s production, and sometimes softens its dark ambiguity.” Through his play on shapes and colors, which often act as a symphony, Redon went beyond mere naturalistic resemblance and aimed to move his viewer through the soft power of flowers. The artist confessed, “Flowers, lying at the confluence of two streams: that of representation and that of memory.”Like Gustave Moreau and several Romantics before him, Redon was very fond of botany and natural sciences. A great friend of the Bordeaux scientist Armand Clavaud, curator of the botanical gardens of the city of Bordeaux and distinguished specialist in aquatic flora (especially algae), Redon did not wish to represent nature as it was, but to suggest the charm and delicacy of each flower that made up its bouquet.Here, in a beautiful blue vase decorated with turquoise ovals (a rarity for Redon who usually preferred to represent plainer vases) several flowers spring out. Apart from the lily of the valley and the titular iris stems, all are not immediately identifiable. Instead, they morph into abstract, colorful and joyful shapes that dance on the paper. The composition is both dense and sparse: while the bouquet almost blooms over the entire sheet, the pastel is very powdery and delicate, giving the scene a certain fragility and transient effect, as if pollen had rubbed the work. The composition remains harmonious thanks to the blank background, which gives the bouquet the impression of a ghostly apparition, entirely disconnected from reality, and floating in front of us, about to disappear as quickly as it materialized.