Over New Year I went to Copenhagen where I visited the show Odillon Redon: Into the Dream at the Glyptotek.
The museum itself is impressive, once passed the entrance you find yourself in a tropical lush forest in the beautiful winter garden, with its glass dome and ancient palm trees.
The display of antiques is stunning. When museums show antique Roman and Greek art, I am always drawn to cabinets containing multiple versions of same detached body parts, in rows. I find it suggests a phenomenology of the style of a body part.
As a child I recall visiting the Riace Museum in Reggio Calabria. They had one of these cabinets filled with detached bronze testicles. I found this display (image below) with noses at the Glyptoteket super cool.
Going back to the Odillon Redon show, from the old building you access a futuristic pavillion.
I am always mesmerised by his work when I see it..
His production shifts from influences of the culture of the time back to a mythological past. In this dimension dream and reality can coexist.
He gained the nickname”The Prince of Dreams” amongst his fellows painters in Paris at the end of the 19th Century.
Odillon Redon worshipped black for half of his artistic life before suddenly embracing colour. But before that, black was his trademark and print was his favourite medium.
“One must respect black. Nothing prostitutes it. It does not please the eye and it awakens no sensuality. It’s the agent of the mind far more than the most beautiful colour in the pallette or prism”.