Redon, Odilon - The Cyclops (1914)

The Eye of the Abyss

Odilon Redon painted The Cyclops in 1914 while the world prepared to tear itself apart. Most artists were looking at the mud of the trenches or the cold steel of the first tanks. Redon looked inward. He abandoned his ghostly charcoal noirs for a palette that feels like a fever dream. The result is a masterpiece of Symbolism that refuses to follow the rules of Greek mythology.

Polyphemus is usually a monster. He is the brute who trapped Odysseus and dashed brains against the rocks. Redon ignores the gore. He reimagines the giant as a shy pining lover peering over a ridge of vibrant flora. His massive eye is not a weapon but a window. It represents the internal visionary world of an artist who spent his life excavating the subconscious before Freud made it a household name.

Below the giant, the sea nymph Galatea sleeps in a state of total vulnerability. she is tucked into a landscape of saturated colors that shouldn't exist in nature. She is unaware of the observer. The giant doesn't reach for her. He simply watches. It is a quiet moment of voyeurism and longing captured just as the lights were going out across Europe. By the time the paint was dry, the air smelled of cordite and the last lingering perfumes of a Belle Époque era were vanishing into the smoke of heavy artillery. Photography was becoming the tool of documentation but Redon proved the inner eye was the only escape left.

References

Kröller-Müller Museum. The Cyclops by Odilon Redon. Official Collection Catalogue.

Gottlieb, Carla. The Problem of the Relationship between Graphism and Color in the Work of Odilon Redon. The Art Bulletin. 1959.

Hauptman, Jodi. Beyond the Visible: The Art of Odilon Redon. The Museum of Modern Art. 2005.

Milner, John. The Symbolists. Phaidon Press. 1971.