Odilon Redon Quotes

• True art lies in a reality that is felt.

  Odilon Redon

  Art, Lying, Reality

  Jodi Hauptman, Odilon Redon (2005). “Beyond the visible: the art of Odilon Redon”, The Museum of Modern Art

  53 Copy quote

• While I recognize the necessity for a basis of observed reality... true art lies in a reality that is felt.

  Odilon Redon

  Art, Lying, Reality

  56 Copy quote

• My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined.

  Odilon Redon

  Drawing, Inspire, Doe

  20 Copy quote

• My originality consists in putting the logic of the visible to the service of the invisible.

  Odilon Redon

  Originality, Logic, Invisible

  Odilon Redon, Pablo Picasso, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) (1952). “Redon, drawings and lithographs: Museum of Modern Art, N.Y., [Feb. 14-April 20, 1952]”

  18 Copy quote

• Nothing in Art is achieved by will alone. It is achieved by docilely submitting to the subconscious.

  Odilon Redon

  Art, Achievement, Art Is

  9 Copy quote

• I have placed there a little door opening on to the mysterious. I have made stories.

  Odilon Redon

  Doors, Stories, Littles

  Michael Wilson, Odilon Redon (1978). “Nature and Imagination: The Work of Odilon Redon”, Phaidon Press

  17 Copy quote

• I have often, as an exercise and as a sustenance, painted before an object down to the smallest accidents of its visual appearance; but the day left me sad and with an unsatiated thirst. The next day I let the other source run, that of imagination, through the recollection of the forms and I was then reassured and appeased.

  Odilon Redon

  Running, Exercise, Next Day

  Roseline Bacou, Odilon Redon (1987). “Odilon Redon: pastels”, George Braziller

  40 Copy quote

• It is precisely from the regret left by the imperfect work that the next one can be born.

  Odilon Redon

  Regret, Next, Imperfect

  27 Copy quote

• Like music my drawings transport us to the ambiguous world of the indeterminate.

  Odilon Redon

  Drawing, World, Ambiguous

  "Great Paintings of the World". Book by Jean-François Guillou, p. 190, 2000.

  15 Copy quote

• I await joyous surprises while working, an awakening of the materials that I work with and that my spirit develops.

  Odilon Redon

  Awakening, Spirit, Surprise

  27 Copy quote

• The Artist submits from day to day to the fatal rhythm of the impulses of the universal world which encloses him, continual centre of sensations, always pliant, hypnotized by the marvels of nature which he loves, he scrutinizes. His eyes, like his soul, are in perpetual communion with the most fortuitous of phenomena.

  Odilon Redon

  Eye, Artist, Soul

  Michael Wilson, Odilon Redon (1978). “Nature and Imagination: The Work of Odilon Redon”, Phaidon Press

  19 Copy quote

• I have a feeling only for shadows

  Odilon Redon

  Feelings, Shadow

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• Artists who approach perfection do not have many ideas.

  Odilon Redon

  Artist, Ideas, Perfection

  9 Copy quote

• I am repelled by those who voice the word 'nature', without having any trace of it in their hearts.

  Odilon Redon

  Heart, Voice

  Quoted in Edward Lucie-Smith Symbolist Art (1972).

  5 Copy quote

• The value of art lies in its power to increase our moral force or establish its heightening influence.

  Odilon Redon

  Art, Lying, Moral

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• What distinguishes the artist from the dilettante? Only the pain the artist feels. The dilettante looks only for pleasure in art.

  Odilon Redon

  Art, Pain, Looks

  14 Copy quote

• One must respect black. Nothing prostitutes it.

  Odilon Redon

  Color, Black

  11 Copy quote

• The good work proceeds with tenacity, intention, without interruption, with an equal measure of passion and reason and it must surpass that goal the artist has set for himself.

  Odilon Redon

  Passion, Artist, Goal

  7 Copy quote

• The painter is not an intellectual if, when he has painted a nude woman, he gives us the idea that she is just about to put her clothes back on.

  Odilon Redon

  Ideas, Clothes, Giving

  6 Copy quote

• I am certain about what I will never do - but not about what my art will render.

  Odilon Redon

  Art, Conviction, Certain

  11 Copy quote

• All my originality consists?in giving life in human fashion to beings which are impossible according to the laws of possibility.

  Odilon Redon

  Fashion, Law, Giving

  Quoted in Edward Lucie-Smith Symbolist Art (1972).

  8 Copy quote

• The artist yields often to the stimuli of materials that will transmit his spirit.

  Odilon Redon

  Artist, Yield, Spirit

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• It is difficult to judge one's contemporaries; perhaps it is impossible to understand them.

  Odilon Redon

  Judging, Understanding, Impossible

  9 Copy quote

• The fundamental grey which differentiates the masters, expresses them and is the soul of all colour.

  Odilon Redon

  Soul, Fundamentals, Masters

  9 Copy quote

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