Head of Man in Shell

Odilon Redons Head of Man in Shell from around 1910 is a watercolor with black chalk and pen and ink on ivory wove paper that combines the fantastic subject matter of his earlier noirs with the chromatic richness of his late paintings, creating an image that hovers between the nightmare world of his charcoal drawings and the luminous visionary world of his flower paintings. The man in a shell, a figure who appears to grow out of or be contained within a mollusk shell, is a motif that connects Redons work to the broader Symbolist fascination with the boundary between the human and the natural, the conscious and the unconscious, the self and the other. The watercolor medium, with its capacity for transparent washes and chromatic intensity, allows Redon to create the luminous color effects that characterize his late work while the black chalk and pen and ink provide the linear definition and graphic intensity that connect this work to his earlier charcoal drawings and lithographs. The date of around 1910 places this work in the final year of Redons life, when he was still producing works of extraordinary originality and beauty that combined the fantastic subjects of his youth with the chromatic discoveries of his maturity. The ivory wove paper provides a bright ground that enhances the luminosity of the watercolor and emphasizes the dreamlike quality of the image.

Redons late watercolors are among the most original works in the history of Symbolist art, combining the fantastic subjects of his early noirs with the chromatic richness of his late paintings. Head of Man in Shell influenced the development of Surrealist watercolor and the broader tradition of fantastic art.

A watercolor from around 1910 by Redon depicting a man in a shell, combining the fantastic subject matter of his earlier noirs with the luminous chromatic richness of his late paintings in a hybrid of linear definition and coloristic vision.