Study for Odilon Redon in the Perspective of the Unconscious: Centering on before His Black Series

Abstract

Odilon Redon (1840-1916) was a painter who represented French symbolism in Western modern painting. Redon’s black is not simply an expression of depression and anger of ‘the abandoned child.’ The author explained that the libidinal satisfaction of his idealized mother object and dependence on father, and the Oedipus conflict by ambivalent emotion with these two important objects were expressed as a result of a compromise in his painting, and through this process, the unconscious fantasies-individual narratives-played an important role in his black formation. Based on this analysis, the author insisted that paintings of Western art history changed from the era of ideational space to individual space during the Redon time. This study suggests that the un- conscious perspective plays a meaningful role in art history and an important frame of understanding arts that expands the boundaries of the whole human being indefinitely.