symbolism: fin de siècle europe flight from modernity, primitivist critique of european culture,...

Symbolism: Fin de Siècle EuropeFlight from modernity, Primitivist critique of European culture, reaction against 19th century mechanistic Positivism: the dominant faith in science and technology.

Objective “realism" is rejected for the representation of personal symbols, memory, imagination, and dreams to evoke a sympathetic understanding of the artist's “Idea” in the viewer as music does.

"Art has gone through a long period of aberration caused by physics, chemistry, mechanics, and the study of nature....Artists, having lost all their savagery, went astray on every path."

Gauguin

Symbolism and DecadenceSubjective vision

CORRESPONDENCES (a literal translation from the French)

Charles Baudelaire, 1857

Nature is a temple whose living columns sometimes allow confused words to escape;man passes through these forests of symbols,Which regard him with familiar looks.As diffuse echoes from afar minglein a shadowy and profound unisonas vast as the darkness and the light,scents, colors and sounds commune.Here are some perfumes fresh as infants' skin,sweet as the oboe's song and green as the prairies- while others, corrupt, rich and triumphant,have the expansiveness of infinite things,the ambergris, musk, benzoin, and incense,that chant the ecstasies of the spirit and the senses.

Charles Baudelaire's Theory of Correspondences in which objects become signsfor the artist's personal ideas and feelings includes the idea of "Synesthesia" in which the 5 senses yield equivalent and concomitant responses, so that a line can be "noble" or "false“ (Gauguin), a shade of yellow, "sour" and clanging (Kandinsky).

Paul Gauguin, Mallarmé (Nevermore), lithograph for publication in artists’ “little magazine,”1891

Paul Gauguin, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? Oil on burlap, 139 × 375 cm, 1897–1898

Symbolism and Primitivism

“Studio of the North” in Pont Aven, 1888Cloissonism and Japonism

Post-Impressionist (Symbolist): linear, flat patterning, subjective rather than objective vision, no visible light source

Emile Bernard, Breton Women in a Green Meadow, 1888 (Pont Aven)

Gauguin, Vision After the Sermon: Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, 1888(Pont Aven)

(left) Paul Sérusier, Talisman, 1888, oil on cigar box lid

Nabis, Pont Aven “School” of Gauguin (“Studio of the North”)

(right) Sérusier, Portrait of Paul Ranson Dressed as a Prophet (Nabi)1890, oil on canvas, 60 x 45 cm

Maurice Denis (French Nabis and Symbolist painter, 1870–1943), Muses in the Sacred Wood, oil on canvas, 1893

Remember that a picture, before being a battle horse, a nude, an anecdote or whatnot, is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled

in a certain order.”

Maurice Denis, Definition of Neo-Traditionalism, 1890

James Ensor (Belgian Symbolist, 1860-1949), Self Portrait with Masks, 1899

. . . and my suffering, scandalized, insolent, cruel, malicious masks. . . I have joyfully shut myself in the solitary milieu ruled by the mask with a face of violence and brilliance.

James Ensor

James Ensor, Entry of Christ into Brussels in 1889, 1888, 99 x 169,” oil on canvas, The Getty

Compare Dostoyevsky's The Grand Inquisitor from The Brothers Karamazov

Ensor, detail of Entry of Christ into Brussels in 1889

James Ensor, The Intrigue, 1890, oil on canvas

Compare: Francisco Goya (Spanish, 1746-1828), The Witches Sabbath (detail) 1820-23, fresco transferred to canvas

Odilon Redon (French Symbolist painter and graphic artist (1840-1916), The Eye Balloon, charcoal, 1878 (right) Redon, The Smiling Spider, 1881, charcoal, 49.5 x 39 cm

Redon, Silence, 1911, oil on paper

My sole aim: To instill in the spectator, by means of quite unexpected allurements, all the evocations and fascinations of the unknown on the boundaries of thought.

Redon

Edvard Munch (Norwegian Symbolist-Expressionist 1863-1944)Self Portrait with Cigarette, 1895, oil on canvas,110.5 x 85.5 cm

Edvard Munch, The Vampire, oil on canvas, 1893

Munch, Puberty, 1895, oil on canvas, 60 x 43”

Munch, The Dance of Life, 1899-1900, oil on canvas, 49 1/2 x 75,” National Gallery, Oslo

Munch, The Lonely Ones, woodcut, 1894, and painting, 1935

Munch, The Scream, 1893, Casein/waxed crayon and tempera on paper (cardboard), 35 7/8 x 29,“ National Gallery, Oslo(Left) Munch, The Scream, 1893, woodcut

This version of The Scream was stolen from the Norwegian National Gallery in 1994.

August, 2004 – thieves escaping with another version of The Scream from the Munch museum in Norway. Recovered August, 2006 with minor damage. Two paintings are valued at $15 million dollars.

Madonna, 1894-95

Recovery – CBS news

Gustave Klimt (Austrian Symbolist, 1862-1918) Music I, 1895Oil on canvas, 37 x 44.5 cm

Klimt, Idyll, 1884, Oil on canvas, 49.5 x 73.5 cmVienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum

Klimt, Love, 1895, Oil on canvas, 60 x 44 cm, Vienna Art Historical Museum

Klimt, Pallas Athene, 1898, Oil on canvas, 75 x 75 cm

Joseph Maria Olbrich, (Austrian, 1867-1908)Vienna Secession building, 1898, Jugendstijl

Above the entrance:To every age its art and to art its freedom

Vienna Secession Building, Jugendstijl details of front

Klimt, Beethoven Frieze: The Hostile Powers, 1902, Casein paint on stucco, 220 x 635 cm, Vienna Secession building, lower floor

Klimt, Beethoven Frieze: Praise to Joy, the God-descended, 1902Casein paint on stucco, 220 x 470 cm

Klimt, Death & Life, 1916