Monday 27 April 2009

Redon on titles of drawings

Odilon Redon, Roger and Angelica, Pastel, 1910

"The title that occasionally identifies my drawings can be superfluous. It is justified only when it is vague, indeterminate, and even equivocal. My drawings inspire and cannot be defined. They do not determine anything. They place us as music does in the world of the ambiguous and the indeterminate."

Odilon Redon, "Confessions d'artiste", Soi-même. Journal (1867-1915) in Henri Dorra, Symbolist Art Theories, University of California Press, 1995, p. 55.