The dream becomes reality – Sydsvenskan

Odilon Redon, "Cyclopen", circa 1914.picture: Rik Klein Gotink

Odilon Redon (1840-1916) appeared at a time of bohemian life and new fashion in the art. But he jumped at once the hook, the self-proclaimed geniuses and the latest art. His age was made up of discoveries such as evolution, microbes, bacteria and the human soul, with Freud's dreamy blur in the center.

With superb manners that he learned from the master of the Renaissance, he mixed new ideas with biblical and ancient myths in a world of stunning images and never seen. His version of Darwin in the folder "The Origins" is hialos. First comes a cute animal that seems to say "mu" and in the next sheet, he wondered if the first eye was in a flower. This ocular plant then became one of the common motifs of its world inhabited by cyclops and other monkeys.

Redon fused outside and inside, reality and dream. As in the case of Darwin, it is often inspired by advances in science and technology. And of course, the military use of the air balloons was to spy on the enemy behind his famous lithograph depicting a head that rises in the sun with a smaller head in the basket. But these simple facts do not explain the magic of course. He, on the contrary, made his dark by working with all means, scraped, rubbed, and in a drawing I even discovered a shoe print. And this well before Max Ernst and the surrealists.

"Martyr's Head", co-drawing, 1877.picture: Rik Klein Gotink

For a fortnight, Redon resigned in the glowing clouds of black before using color. In fact, it was the same thing, because the amateur violinist Redon had for objective to create worlds of musical clans. The dominant composer of the time was Richard Wagner with his great works of art for operas. But despite some of Brynhild's drawings, Redon was not Wagnerian. Like many of his compatriots, he aspired to new French music. And he experimented after his friend Claude Debussy had listened to the Java Gamanan Orchestra at the Paris World Fair in 1889. Revelation of movements still rising with a magical skimmer reminiscent of the drawings of Redon. The two friends shared the interest in ancient myths and soon came the time of Debussy's "The Afternoon of a Fool".

Redon's fantasies around Brynhild were also very different moments from the Germanic Shield. Like many of her young women and men, she was more androgynous than warrior. He let Salome pose the most ghost with the beautiful head of John the Baptist. And signed many skulls of Orthus and various martyrs, all highlighted beyond the limits of sex.

Glyptoteket managed to complete the exhibition with the dream theme. In different rooms, the new light crosses themes like science, blacks, contemporary colleagues. Throughout the day, works from the museum's own collections are also presented in close dialogue with Redon. It's very imaginative. But in the room around the music, it's a stop. Eugène Delaplanches (1836-1891) resides here in the sculpture of a woman who lets her clothes slip from her body while holding her throat firmly and firmly, the strap goes back and forth . Then the hall of misogyny of time has run out. Totalkrock with Redon: With a few exceptions, his wives are not sexual fantasies in the unclean spirit of the day. Tecknarnerven has rarely considered gender.

There is an unexpected trail of Redon in our time. During his appearance in The Armory Show in New York in 1913, Marcel Duchamp stressed: "If I wanted to indicate my point of departure, I would quote the art of Redon." eye. And, of course, the son of the bride in Duchamp's "Being Given" is an echo of Galatea in the "Cyclo" of Redon. Duchamp lets us glimpse a woman in a strange perspective through a mysterious slip. But if we imagine the scene as an inside view through the only frightening eye of the cyclone against the sleeping sea serpent, it is not difficult to be convinced of the link. I do not hesitate because I claim that Duchamp sent a message of greetings to Redon for his late work.

"Into the Dream" is a brilliant show where the Glyptotek brings back an unexpected light on a classic.