The exhibition's main focus is the transition from darkness to light and from monochrome to colour in the work of Odilon Redon (1840-1916), an important French Symbolist artist, often described as a "decadent," which was not just an insult but actually an artistic movement at one time.
Redon was obsessed by the weird, mythic, and uncanny, and was important for his work in charcoals and later pastels, but much more intriguing is the as-yet-unexplored influence of his work on the modern world of manga and anime.
The exhibition's curator Atsuko Hagiwara (萩原敦子), offers a few speculative comments on this:
"This vein of fantasy painting could be said to have been inherited by manga and anime. Indeed, many manga artists are fans of Redon or have been influenced by his work."
In this connection, she mentions Mizuki Shigeru the creator of GeGeGe no Kitarō and Shuzo Oshimi the creator of The Flowers of Evil, an obvious tie-in to Les Fleurs du mal by the French Symbolist poet Charles Baudelaire:
"Considering the popularity of 'dark fantasy' manga among the masses, it is likely that Japan is a country where the fantasy world of Redon is readily accepted."
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Odilon Redon, Concern for the Absolute...Philosopher, 1880, charcoal on paper, 43.2×35.2 cm, (left); The Origins IV. Siren Coming out of the Waves, Dressed in Flames, 1883. lithograph on paper 30×23.4cm, The Museum of Fine Arts, Gifu
Hagiwara points to Japan's own long-standing artistic fascination with the weird and the grotesque:
"My impression is that Japanese art has a lineage of eccentrics, and the names of painters such as Ito Jakuchu, Katsushika Hokusai, Tsukioka Hōnen, Kawanabe Kyōsai and others who depicted yokai (monsters), oddly shaped objects and fantastic beasts are too numerous to mention."
Perhaps this echo or reverberation between the darker side of Japanese manga and the eeriness encoded in French Symbolism will be explored at a later exhibition. I certainly hope so. But speaking of resonances, the present show also coincided with the recently ended exhibition in Tokyo of another fin-de-siècle "decadent," the English illustrator Aubrey Beardsley at the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum.
Hagiwara notes the alignment of the missions of the Shiodome and the Ichigokan:
"In our country, there are not a small number of enthusiastic fans of art with a slightly darker, spiritualist bent, including decadent art and Symbolist art, rather than the bright, healthy style and subject of Impressionist paintings. In my opinion, it is reasonable for the Mitsubishi Ichigokan and our museum, whose collections are the works of artists with links to Symbolism and which are not extremely large in terms of exhibition space, to regularly hold exhibitions that focus on art and artists who are sometimes obscured by the presence of popular artists, but who are very important in the history of art."
As hinted at here, Redon's work has a subtle, introverted, and even insidious appeal.
Starting his career with idiosyncratic charcoal sketches and sooty lithographs, seemingly drawn for his own perverse amusement, he was later taken up by the Decadent and Symbolist movements through writers like Joris-Karl Huysmans and Stéphane Mallarmé and painters like the influential Nabis group.
Symbolism, in essence, was the attempt to make the invisible, the abstract, and the emotional visible, or in the words of Mallarmé, "to depict not the thing but the effect it produces."
Starting his career with idiosyncratic charcoal sketches and sooty lithographs, seemingly drawn for his own perverse amusement, he was later taken up by the Decadent and Symbolist movements through writers like Joris-Karl Huysmans and Stéphane Mallarmé and painters like the influential Nabis group.
Symbolism, in essence, was the attempt to make the invisible, the abstract, and the emotional visible, or in the words of Mallarmé, "to depict not the thing but the effect it produces."
This can be intuited in works like "Concern for the Absolute...Philosopher," a gloomy lithograph from 1880 with its totemic philosopher and masonic sun. Is Redon capturing the post-Nietzschean pessimism of European philosophy or did he just eat the wrong thing before bedtime?
Twisted mermaids, anthropomorphic spiders, disembodied heads and eyeballs, and other weird critters crawl through a mythic or dreamlike space that seems dark and disturbing. The switch to colour, however, transforms this exploration of the darker corners of consciousness into something more positive and life-affirming.
The move coincided with his rising fame and association with other artists who venerated his work.
"From around 1890, Redon created fewer lithographs depicting a world of shadows and more portraying a mystical world of light." Hagiwara comments. "Where he once used black to express a deep, light-swallowing darkness, he now used it to depict light itself. Coinciding with this shift from darkness to light, Redon gradually began to build new relationships with collectors, dealers, and fellow painters. Of particular importance are his contacts with Gauguin and young artists, mainly of the Nabis School. It is assumed that it was through them that Rodon developed his interests in new mediums (oil, pastel) and subjects."
Odilon Redon, Anemones in a Black Vase, c. 1905, pastel on paper, 64.8×57.5cm, The Museum of Fine Arts, Gifu
This could sometimes lead to something rather twee and sentimental-looking, like "Profile of Young Girl among the Flowers" (c. 1900-10), but even these works can mesmerize with their vibrant colours that photography can only capture a shadow of. In fact, seen in the skilful lighting of the exhibition, Redon's more prosaic flower paintings are one of the successes of the show, creating their own sense of something magical and unseen transformed into visuals.
"As a museum owned by the company, one of whose products is lighting, we value beautiful and comfortable lighting to see artworks," Hagiwara explains. "This time, Mr. Fujiwara Takumi of Light Meister Co., Ltd. was the designer of the lighting. He seemed to have great difficulty especially in lightening Redon’s pastels, because the illuminance of the light for pastels was limited to 50 lux, which meant it was not bright enough to bring out the full appeal of the extraordinarily bright and multi-layered colour of pastels created by Redon. To overcome these kinds of challenges, he, in some cases, used more than three spotlights to lighten a single pastel painting, employing several colour temperatures and angles."
Odilon Redon: Dream of light, luminous shadow will be held at the Panasonic Shiodome Museum of Art until June, 22.
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