Two trees 1875

Curator: This charcoal drawing, simply titled "Two Trees," was created by Odilon Redon around 1875. Immediately, I feel a kind of hushed reverence looking at it. There’s a stillness here that’s quite powerful. Editor: Stillness, yes, but also a foreboding. It's a stark landscape, isn't it? Considering it comes from the Romanticism era, the darkness doesn’t surprise me. Nature wasn’t just pretty, it was sublime and potentially dangerous. I see the historical anxieties mirrored in the shadowed forms. Curator: Precisely! Look how the charcoal almost vibrates with texture. Those aren't just any trees; they're like ancient sentinels guarding a forgotten threshold. I almost feel the grit of the charcoal under my own fingers, can you feel the melancholy radiating off the page? Editor: Melancholy for sure, and a sense of isolation, particularly if we consider the colonial exploitation of natural resources that was already happening at that time. Who benefits from these "empty" landscapes? Redon wasn't necessarily making an overt political statement here, but we have to read it in the context of deforestation and capitalist expansion. Curator: Interesting, yes, perhaps nature deforested is symbolic. For me, it transcends that literal reading. Redon often used black and white to explore dreamscapes, internal landscapes. I wonder if these two trees represent something deeply personal. Two paths? Two sides of his own personality wrestling in the shadows? Editor: Symbolism, absolutely. But Symbolism, especially in Redon, wasn't detached from the world. It was a response, however veiled, to very real social and political shifts. Consider, for instance, that Redon's contemporary art scene, like so many since, lacked racial and gender diversity. How can one explore this absence and still produce art? He paints the black void of a deforested landscape, not the actual destruction. Curator: It’s the 'not said' that is key here for me; what it is suggestive of? Redon isn't giving us answers, which can feel rather liberating. These are not 'two trees' it is the space in-between the trunks which gives this image life. A wonderful, contemplative work... Editor: Ultimately, what resonates is the visual impact of Redon’s artwork and that push and pull between individual and collective interpretation. It challenges us to delve beneath the surface, to excavate the latent narratives lurking within the seemingly tranquil groves of our minds, our histories, our realities.