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拍品專文
About 1908 Redon embarked upon a series of oils and pastels in which he recycled the personal imagery that he generated throughout his career, as if he wanted to demonstrate the fundamental unity of his oeuvre. In Enlightened profile that must date from 1908-1914, several themes that Redon invented, are combined in a suggestive interplay.
The roots of this image are to be found in his early drawings, where rocks frequently assume human faces. This ambiguity is fully exploited in several drawings from the early eighties, among which a charcoal drawing from circa 1883 that was sold in these rooms on 12 December 1990 (lot 236) as 'Sphinx, face in the rocks'. These early images share a powerful dark silhouette against a shining background just as the head in this painting. A closer look reveals that the Enlightened profile has a hint of a crown of thorns around the head. The agonising head of the Suffering Christ was frequently drawn by Redon from the late seventies onwards, but in the nineties the element of suffering is suppressed and it assumes a meditative quality which is in harmony with the artist's growing spiritual interests. Later, even the images of Christ and the meditating Buddha are conflated, as in the famous pastel in the Museum Kröller-Mller, Sacred Heart from circa 1906. Here, the sublimity of the thoughts is made visible by a flower that emerges from the breast of the figure. In Enlightened profile this spiritual quality is suggested by the radiating background as well as by the abstract flowers that surround the profile.
As an image, Enlightened profile exemplifies a tendency in Redon's later work to combine a concrete human presence with abstract imagery in order to stimulate the imagination of the beholder. As he put it himself: 'Imagine arabesque or varied meanders that do not unfold in one plane, but spatially, with all mental consequences that are implicated by the deep and undetermined recesses of the sky; imagine the play of their lines that are projected and combined with the most divergent elements, including a human face [...] the effect that it will have on the mind of the spectator will stimulate his imagination." To the artist, this kind of representation was even the essence of painting itself: 'the application of paint on a surface from which a humane presence wil emerge, the supreme emanation of the spirit." (cf lit. Odilon Redon, A soi-même, Paris 1922, pp. 27, 103)
We kindly thank dr. F.W.G. Leeman for his help in cataloguing this lot
To be sold with a certificate of authenticity from the Wildenstein Institute in Paris, dated 15 October 1998.
See colour illustration
The roots of this image are to be found in his early drawings, where rocks frequently assume human faces. This ambiguity is fully exploited in several drawings from the early eighties, among which a charcoal drawing from circa 1883 that was sold in these rooms on 12 December 1990 (lot 236) as 'Sphinx, face in the rocks'. These early images share a powerful dark silhouette against a shining background just as the head in this painting. A closer look reveals that the Enlightened profile has a hint of a crown of thorns around the head. The agonising head of the Suffering Christ was frequently drawn by Redon from the late seventies onwards, but in the nineties the element of suffering is suppressed and it assumes a meditative quality which is in harmony with the artist's growing spiritual interests. Later, even the images of Christ and the meditating Buddha are conflated, as in the famous pastel in the Museum Kröller-Mller, Sacred Heart from circa 1906. Here, the sublimity of the thoughts is made visible by a flower that emerges from the breast of the figure. In Enlightened profile this spiritual quality is suggested by the radiating background as well as by the abstract flowers that surround the profile.
As an image, Enlightened profile exemplifies a tendency in Redon's later work to combine a concrete human presence with abstract imagery in order to stimulate the imagination of the beholder. As he put it himself: 'Imagine arabesque or varied meanders that do not unfold in one plane, but spatially, with all mental consequences that are implicated by the deep and undetermined recesses of the sky; imagine the play of their lines that are projected and combined with the most divergent elements, including a human face [...] the effect that it will have on the mind of the spectator will stimulate his imagination." To the artist, this kind of representation was even the essence of painting itself: 'the application of paint on a surface from which a humane presence wil emerge, the supreme emanation of the spirit." (cf lit. Odilon Redon, A soi-même, Paris 1922, pp. 27, 103)
We kindly thank dr. F.W.G. Leeman for his help in cataloguing this lot
To be sold with a certificate of authenticity from the Wildenstein Institute in Paris, dated 15 October 1998.
See colour illustration