Odilon Redon (French, 1840–1916.)

Underwater Vision [Vision sous-marine]. (c. 1910)

Jan. 28, 2008

This morning, Peter told me about the French painter Odilon de Redon, so we visited the online exhibition at MOMA http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2005/redon/redon.html

Although I loved his paintings, this exhibition is primarily lithographs in three themed categories, metamorphosis, Monsters and Tales. I believe he is popularly known for vases of flowers, but here we see his Surrealist visions such as the smiling spider and the hot air balloon drawn as an eye. Gauguin said that in Redon’s work, “dreams become reality because of the believability he gives them.” Redon draws from studies of nature then imagines alternate visions of hyper-reality from there.

Redon was a scholar, and I can see that intellectualism in his interest in Darwin and The Origin of the Species. His anatomical and botanical details are precise, even when imaginary.

Image to the left, “Smiling Spider”; yes, there is a wolf-spider smile down in the terrifying darkness…

“Caught between description and dream, the observed and the imagined, Odilon Redon’s (French, 1840–1916) work transformed the natural world into dark visions and bizarre fantasies. Delving into the imagination, Redon created a universe of hybrid creatures, offered his own interpretations of literary, biblical, and mythological subjects, and presented the environment in a singular way: we see grinning disembodied teeth, smiling spiders, winged chariots, unfamiliar plant life.” (quote from the online exhibition at MOMA)

The “grinning, disembodied teeth” refers to a wonderfully strange litho of teeth looming out of a library shelf–the reference is to an Edgar Allen Poe quote:

“The shutting of a door disturbed me, and, looking up, I found that my cousin had departed from the chamber. But from the disordered chamber of my brain, had not, alas! departed, and would not be driven away, the white and ghastly spectrum of the teeth.

Not a speck on their surface – not a shade on their enamel – not an indenture in their edges – but what that period of her smile had sufficed to brand in upon my memory. I saw them now even more unequivocally than I beheld them then. The teeth! – the teeth! – they were here, and there, and everywhere, and visibly and palpably before me; long, narrow, and excessively white, with the pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment of their first terrible development.

Then came the full fury of my monomania, and I struggled in vain against its strange and irresistible influence. In the multiplied objects of the external world I had no thoughts but for the teeth. For these I longed with a phrenzied desire.

All other matters and all different interests became absorbed in their single contemplation. They – they alone were present to the mental eye, and they, in their sole individuality, became the essence of my mental life. I held them in every light. I turned them in every attitude. I surveyed their characteristics. I dwelt upon their peculiarities. I pondered upon their conformation. I mused upon the alteration in their nature. I shuddered as I assigned to them in imagination a sensitive and sentient power, and even when unassisted by the lips, a capability of moral expression.”

That is from a longer perhaps we could call it a creative nonfiction piece called “Bernice.” You can read the whole deliciously over-wrought piece online, here:
http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/eapoe/bl-eapoe-ber.htm

Shipwreck at Dinner Rock, Malaspina Strait

Can you scry the patterned stone,
trace the crystal surfaces of stone?
(Salt and green, salt and green.)

Because it is said the stones remember all.
you explode pink granite
(quartz, feldspar, mica) crystal
by crystal until molten molecules spin
in a slow, rose mist;
and still they tell you nothing.
(Salt and green, salt and green.)

It’s not for the rocks to say, here
a child, shipwrecked, lost
all seven years of her life. That
is the speech of the cross on the rock;
but when the splintering mind
splits the silvered wood of the cross,
a hand reaches out for the dust.
(Salt and green, salt and green.)
The light, the light, the light.

Cedar bones and granite stones,
you reach for meaning here,
cheek flat to the flat,
silvering hair, passing light;
but all there is is all
there ever has been, maybe less:
salt and green the sea,
the sea, the rock, the light,
the light, the light, the light.

Jan. 26, 2008

The Night Vision Journal has really evolved for me. I started with scribble art–I would close my eyes and scribble with a silver gel pen, then open my eyes and use my colored pencils to find the images in it. In fact, I did one this morning and put it in the journal, called “Birds and Goat Go to Market.”

Then I did a few pictures just drawing what I saw, either in front of me or from memory–like the tree on right left that is “Shapes in the Fog” or “Autumn in the Willamette Valley.

Of course, some are dreams, and then some are what is called active imagination, and those are images I just imagine as I draw and are often connected to free-floating feelings, like “Oppressive Forces at Dinner Plate Rocks,” and “Unsettling Effects of the Pale Lemon Sun.”

Lately, I’ve started to draw memories–I’ve only put two up so far, “GR-09-01” and “I Made a Huge Bowl of Chocolate Pudding (just before my mother screamed).” I’m working on another one of a childhood sanctuary under a juniper tree high on a steep hillside. These are the most electrifying to me; I feel like I’m starting to jack in to my central compulsion to do this art.

It is a very private art for me. The site is up primarily so I can discuss it with my sister Cheryl, who is a very talented professional artist–have you seen her website at cherylrlong.com? It’s beautiful. I showed it to Nancy Rose and to Lloyd and Renita Driedger, oh, and my Mom. That’s about it. It’s really about talking to myself and a few people who understand the hidden faces of the soul. I know you’re out there…