Title
The Temptation of Saint Redon: Biography, Ideology, and Style in the Noirs of Odilon Redon,Used
Sold by Ergodebooks, an authorized reseller.
Returns accepted within 30 days | support@ergodebooks.com
Shipping Information
- Free Standard Shipping — United States only
- Processing Time: 1–3 business days
- Estimated Delivery: 3–5 business days after dispatch
- Double-boxed, fully insured & discreetly packaged
- Tracking number sent via email once dispatched
- Orders over $250 require signature upon delivery. Taxes calculated at checkout.
Returns & Refund
Returns accepted within 30 days of delivery.
Damaged or Defective Item
Free return shipping + replacement or full refund
Wrong Item Received
Free return shipping + replacement or full refund
Change of Mind
Return shipping at customer's expense · 25% restocking fee applies
Payment Option
Bristling with demons, grotesques, and bizarre apparitions, the graphic work of Odilon Redon has often seemed to be the product of a mind unhinged. In The Temptation of Saint Redon, Stephen F. Eisenman argues instead that these works are Redon's conscious and considered response to changing social realitiesan attempt to find refuge from the forces of modernization in an imaginative world of the macabre and the fantastic. Eisenman's careful attention to the circumstances of Redon's life (18401916) allows him to bring into focus the interconnections between Redon's complex style and the culture and society of his time. Born and raised on a sixteenthcentury estate near Bordeaux, Redon was immersed as a child in traditional rural culture. 'I spent my entire childhood in the Mdoc completely free, among peasant children,' he recalled in his memoirs. 'I heard them tell supernatural taleswitches still exist there.'Indeed, local tales and legends of witches, ghosts, oneeyed monsters, evil eyes, and wood fairies figure prominently in Redon's graphic works, which he called his noirs, or 'blacks.' After formal training at Bordeaux and Paris in the 1850s and 1860s, Redon began to chart his independent artistic course. Eisenman shows how, rejecting both naturalism and classicism, Redon, a prototypical Symbolist, found in grotesque and epic genres the expression of organic communities and precapitalist societies. He places Redon's desire for this imagined world of superstitious simplicity a desire manifest in his entire mature artistic practice in the context of contemporary avantgarde movements.Redon's great noirs of the 1870s and 1880s, dreamlike configurations of seemingly irreconcilable elements from portraits, still lifes, and landscapes, show an increasingly subtle control of connotation and a complex indebtedness to caricature, allegory, and puns. Many of the noirs also visually interpret works by likeminded authors, including Baudelaire, Flaubert, Poe, and Mallarm, one of Redon's close friends. Eisenman's analysis of the noirs underscores Redon's interest in creating an imaginative, even fantastic art, that could act directly on the human spirit. In addition to deepening our understanding of Redon and his art, The Temptation of Saint Redon exposes a link between place, politics, personal history, and the artistic imagination.
⚠️ WARNING (California Proposition 65):
This product may contain chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm.
For more information, please visit www.P65Warnings.ca.gov.