Aiming for the Stars

Reviews / Votes

"Aiming for the Stars reaches deep into Redon's imagination, drawing out the resonances of literature, the play of friendship and the pressures of a changing world which shaped an art so rich in the imagery of surprise conjunction and the colour of other worlds." - Richard Thomson, Emeritus Professor of the History of Art, University of Edinburgh
"Odilon Redon once claimed that there was little to say about his life since the defining events had taken place "in his head". Drawing on all available sources, Ted Gott proves him wrong and offers us a fascinating biography of the man, while shedding new light on his art and its reception." - Dario Gamboni, Professor Emeritus of Art History, University of Geneva, and author of The Brush and the Pen: Odilon Redon and Literature
"Ted Gott's Aiming for the Stars offers a beautifully crafted exegesis of Redon's life and art. Replete with little known facts, Gott's deeply researched and brilliant text is the definitive word on one of the most misunderstood and enigmatic artists of the nineteenth century. The author's excellent work is based on careful translations from the many contemporary literary, journalistic, musicological and art-critical writings from both the naysayers and supporters of the intellectual vanguard in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and the United States. Through detailed descriptions of Redon's technical experimentations, Gott presents a complete picture of how the artist was seen then and now. Far from an isolated genius, Redon is shown to be a sensitive but market-savvy art-maker, with a breadth of interests. The man who emerges is one whose ambition and refusal to be categorized allowed him to be shown with the Impressionists and Les XX in Brussels, and later be adopted as a touchstone by a younger generation of artists including Matisse and the Fauves. Along the way, Gott introduces the reader to the late nineteenth-century vogue for esoteric literature, seances and art in Europe and London.
Gott brilliantly intertwines contemporary and modern-day commentaries to bring to life the people, places, and salient influences present along Redon's trajectory, from literary occultism to the wealthy admirers of his near abstract decorative works. The result is neither an apology nor a eulogistic defense of an artist who refused to adhere to anything other than art as expression of the indeterminate. Aiming for the Stars offers a full picture of Redon and a compelling and readable key to what Gott summarizes as Redon's earliest aesthetic precept: "that art should transcend the mere reproduction of nature, embodying the artist's moral thought and moving the viewer to use mind as well as eye in meditating on the idea that lies behind any artistic impulse."" - Gloria Groom, Chair and Winton Green Curator, Painting and Sculpture of Europe, Art Institute of Chicago
"Odilon Redon has long eluded the standard categories of art history: is his work abstract or figurative? Is he "mostly" a painter, printmaker or draughtsman? Should we consider his work "modern" or mythical, and simply bypass the question of history? Redon lived through a variety of personal and political upheavals, including the charged and ever-changing relations between France and Belgium.
In fact, in his rich, admirably lucid, new book on the artist, Ted Gott argues that the answer to these questions must be "all of the above." Gott does not shy away from the complexities and occasional contradictions within Redon's own family, education, and geographic choices, and in so doing produces a text of admirable clarity and narrative momentum.
This is the first deeply researched book on Redon that takes on the seeming contradictions of this enigmatic artist and wrestles them (quite elegantly) into a lucid, original study. Gott delivers Redon to us as a complex but deeply sympathetic character who somehow took all the contradictions of his own geographic origins, complicated family life and periodic migrations and integrated them into his art. The author subtly and sensitively builds a rich narrative about the origin and impact of Redon's visual inventions in a variety of media--in so doing he produces a narrative which seems both especially fresh-and relevant-today.
This is a rewarding, and-perhaps unintentionally-uplifting book to read in our fractured times. In Gott's telling, Redon's work generally overturns (or ignores) the standard boundaries between countries, media, and the mix of familial and political currents that shape truly original visual art. It may be that readers are now better disposed to embrace Redon's idiosyncratic practice than we might have been, say, a decade ago." - Susan Sidlauskas, Distinguished Professor Emerita in the Art History Department, Rutgers University