The Art Of Odilon Redon

Self Portrait, by Odilon Redon

"My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined."

 ~Odilon Redon

Greetings, pond-dwellers. This is hedgewitch. We toads are all pitching in to support National Poetry Month, and the efforts so many of us are making to write a poem a day in April. Today it's my turn to offer some inspiration. I have decided on a simple ekphrasis challenge (scroll to bottom for detailed explanation) based on the work of French symbolist painter and illustrator, Odilon Redon.

The Flight Into Egypt, by Odilon Redon

"Odilon Redon (born Bertrand-Jean Redon; French: ( April 20, 1840 – July 6, 1916) was a French symbolist painter, printmaker, draughtsman and pastellist... [He] acquired the nickname "Odilon" from his mother, Odile. Redon started drawing as a child... His failure to pass the entrance exams at Paris’ École des Beaux-Arts ended..plans for a career as an architect, although he briefly studied painting there.[Later,]..back in his native Bordeaux, he took up sculpture..etching and lithography.

At the end of [his service in the Franco-Prussian War], he moved to Paris, and resumed working almost exclusively in charcoal and lithography. He called his visionary works, conceived in shades of black, his noirs. It was not until 1878 that his work gained any recognition [and].. he published his first album of lithographs...in 1879....In the 1890s pastel and oils became his favored media... " You can read the rest of his full biography here on wikipedia

Caliban On A Branch, a 'noir' by Odilon Redon

I have often chosen works by Redon to illustrate my own poems as there is an affinity I feel for his art which I don't find in many artists. Perhaps that's because Redon was a Symbolist, (though his later paintings also show a strong Post-Impressionist quality) and we all know by now how I am all about the symbols.

Head On A Stem, 'noir' by Odilon Redon

Symbolism was  a  European movement  around the turn of the Twentieth Century in painting and poetry, which embodied many aspects of the Romantic school, but with a more fantastic and often a more morbid and inward turning eye, or as wikipedia puts it:

"Symbolism was largely a reaction against naturalism and realism, anti-idealistic styles which were attempts to represent reality in its gritty particularity, and to elevate the humble and the ordinary over the ideal. Symbolism was a reaction in favour of spirituality, the imagination, and dreams."

Ophelia, by Odilon Redon

The movement was  heavily influenced by such poets as Poe and Baudelaire, and its traits appeared in the work of a wide variety of painters, including Gustav Klimt, Edward Munch, and Frida Kahlo among many others. 

 

Leda And The Swan, by Odilon Redon

 "..The symbolist painters used mythological and dream imagery. The symbols used by symbolism are not the familiar emblems of mainstream iconography but intensely personal, private, obscure and ambiguous references...more a philosophy than an actual style of art.."~Ibid

Mystery, by Odilon Redon

Redon painted a wide variety of subjects and used a varying approach, so I hope you will find in the pictures I've selected or at the link provided below, one that will bring a thought or a dream to your pen. All his works shown here are in the public domain, but if you use one on your blog, please give the title and artist's name so others can come to know him, too.

Here are a few final examples, and you can find many more at wikipaintings.org 

"I have often, as an exercise and as a sustenance, painted.. an object down to the smallest accidents of its visual appearance; but the day left me sad and with an unsatiated thirst. The next day I let the other source run, that of imagination, through the recollection of the forms and I was then reassured and appeased."

~Odilon Redon

Cup of Cognition(The Children's Cup) by Odilon Redon

Boat In The Moonlight, by Odilon Redon

Flowers, by Odilon Redon

Mask of The Red Death, another 'noir' by Odilon Redon

Ekphrasis Challenge

Ekphrasis::  a literary description of or commentary on a visual work of art (Merriam Webster)

So, toads, toadettes and friends of the site, let us jump directly into 'the mysterious world of the undetermined,' select a drawing or painting by Odilon Redon and write to the subject, mood, or theme which it suggests. You can write in any form, long or short, in free verse or prose poetry. You can write whether you are participating in the poem a day process, or just because one of the pictures speaks to you.

As usual, your response for this challenge should be new writing, or an older piece so extensively reworked and rewritten as to be new, which clearly conforms to the challenge subject matter. Please link below, and I will be around to see where the works of this favorite of mine take everyone. 

Enjoy!

All artwork by Odilon Redon, Public Domain, via wikipaintings.org. Quotes via wikipedia.

Get Listed with hedgewitch: Mind and Symbol

The Sun fighting the Moon: "The "conjunction of opposites", or meeting of opposites represents the conjunction of the conscious and the unconscious (alchemical engraving from Aurora consurgens Treaty, 1500)." Public domain via wikipedia.fr

"Our soul, as our body, is composed of all elements that have existed in the lineage of our ancestors. The "new" in the individual soul is a recombination, infinitely varied, of extremely old components "
- C. G. Jung 

Greetings, Toads, Toadettes and Garden aficionados, hedgewitch here. Those who've paid attention to my various ramblings over the years know I've had a certain resistance to working from word lists, so it may seem odd to see me in charge today of our Get Listed challenge. Gradually, however, the creative persistence of our various Garden dwellers and followers has drawn me into an exercise I've come to find very productive and rewarding. I hope you will find it the same. 

Note: I do tend to go on and on, people, so if you'd like to skip all the verbiage and cut to the chase, feel free to scroll down at any time to the bold text below titled The Challenge, where all the nuts and bolts are located.

So today it's my turn to present a list, and my source material is the world of dreams and symbols, the unconscious mind, and its role in our creative process and indeed our lives, as explored in the works of analytical psychologist and spiritual explorer, Carl Gustav Jung.

C.G. Jung, frontispiece, 1964 edition, Man and His Symbols

From wikipedia link above:

"Carl Gustav Jung (/26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961), often referred to as C. G. Jung, was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology... the central concept of ...[which]...is individuation—the psychological process of integrating opposites, including the conscious with the unconscious, while still maintaining their relative autonomy.... Jung proposed and developed [among others,] the concepts of extraversion and introversion; archetypes, and the collective unconscious...


His work has been influential in psychiatry and in the study of religion, philosophy, archeology, anthropology, literature, and related fields. He was a prolific writer, many of whose works were not published until after his death." ~wikipedia

 “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
― C.G. Jung

Cover of 1964 edition  The mandala is a frequently used spiritual symbol in many cultures.

“One book opens another.”
― C.G. Jung

I've always been fond of picture books, books that tell their narrative with illustrations as much as words, especially those that deal with myth, magic and history, so it's no surprise that one of my favorites is Jung's enormous word-and-picture book Man and His Symbols. Our word list today is drawn from the first chapter of this literary project Jung worked on shortly before his death in 1961: a presentation of his theories of psychological analysis, dreams, and components of the unconscious mind using extensive imagery. It was intended for a general audience rather than the psychoanalytic specialist, and  I recommend it to all who'd like to take a visual and verbal trip down below our mental floorboards, where so much of the material for our poetry and for art is found.

Below you will find some pictures and concepts drawn from the book to get us going:

This painting by Paul Gauguin (Two Tahitian Women, 1899) is used in Man and his Symbols to illustrate one stage of the anima, or female inside the male: the primal woman. Public domain via wikipaintings.org

Saint Michael fighting the dragon, Hours of Etienne Chevalier, illuminated by Jean Fouquet. Innumerable symbols here: "The scene is inspired by chapter 12 of the Apocalypse which describes the combat of St. Michael against the dragon, symbol of the forces of Evil. Assisted by the angels, one of whom holds his helmet and lance, Michael raises his  sword against a monster of seven heads in front of a mountainous and fantastic landscape. Below, the caves of  hell open where Satan oversees the torture of hearts. On the right, one sees in the flames the dragon  defeated  by the archangel." Public domain via wikipedia.fr

Rock Garden After Rain, by ECP on Flick'r,Creative Commons

"Stones are frequent images of the Self (because they are complete--ie; 'unchanging'--and lasting)" ~quoted from Man & His Symbols, p. 207

Another illustration used in Man and His Symbols, George De La Tour's Repenting Magdalene, 1630, contains many universal symbols, including the skull, the candle flame, the book, the mirror and Mary Magdealene herself. Public Domain via wikipaintings.org





 

The Challenge: 

“Words are animals, alive with a will of their own”
―C.G. Jung

Now, without any further incursions into the world of psychoanalysis and its complexities and jargon on my part, I'd like us to attempt to dig into the world of mind and symbol, and write about something that comes from 'under the hood' of our conscious thought process. The piece should deal with the world of dreams, the mind,  symbols or the unconscious. It may retell an archetypal myth. It may be about a specific dream. It may be about sanity or madness, or it may explore and focus on any one or more of the symbols shown in these pictures or on a personally meaningful one. 

I have included thirty-two words (below) so that our poems may take different directions. There is no maximum number limit, but also no requirement to use them all, either. 

However you must use at least five of the words from this list drawn from Chapter One of Man & His Symbols, in your choice of either a poem utilizing a form, in a prose-poem,  or in free verse.  

  

So without further ado, here is the word list.  

Have at it, pond dwellers, and show us what is hidden beneath those mental floorboards. 

meaning

wheel

name

inkling

unconscious

perception

limit

amplification

faint

threshold

frail

dissociated

control

evasive

tender

oscillate

tension

impulse

penumbra

fetish

stiff

irrational

precise

trigger

primitive

cryptic

jump

boundaries

deflected

forgetting

collective

disguise

 

As always new work is preferred, but if by utilizing a significant number of words (10 or more) from the list above, an older work can be given a new voice that fits in with the theme, that is also welcome. If you choose to revamp an older work, feel free to include both versions. 

If using any of the images I've included, please include attribution, as always.

C.G. Jung quotes via Goodreads