Centaur with Cello 1910

This little oil painting of a Centaur with Cello lives in a private collection and was made by Odilon Redon. I love how Redon laid down these blurry strokes of brown, beige and green, how everything seems to be emerging from the darkness. I can just imagine him building the image from nothing, adding thin layer upon thin layer, adjusting, blurring, allowing the forms to materialize slowly, intuitively. I’m wondering whether Redon felt a kinship with this hybrid creature. Was he also trying to find harmony between different aspects of himself? And then, the cello! So big and awkward. I get the sense that playing it would require an enormous amount of effort, not unlike the effort of painting itself. Maybe Redon was thinking about other artist-musicians like Paul Klee, who was also deeply involved with music and how that translates into artmaking. I’m sure they are all playing together now in some great beyond.