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19/12/12 ymbolist Art -- Introduction

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The Symbolist Movement -- An Introduction

The Symbolist movement was first identified in literature; poets such as Baudelaire, StphaneMallarm and others began writing mysterious and elegantly polished verse shortly after mid-century. The Symbolist Manifesto in literature was published in 1886 by Jean Moras. Visualartists were less likely to publish such theoretical charters in the nineteenth century, and the

emergence of Symbolist painting is therefore harder to chart. Nonetheless, the movement quicklybecame multi-disciplinary and international. Brussels became one of the leading centers ofSymbolist art and literature. AlthoughLes XXwere not exclusively Symbolist, one of thefounders of the society, Fernand Khnopff, was a leading Symbolist. He was the first artist to bewritten about as a symbolist, in an article written by Emile Verhaeren in 1886. Verhaerenstressed Khnopff's modernism in this article, defining Symbolist art as part of:

"A strong recoil of the modern imagination toward the past, an enormous scientific inquiry andunfamiliar passions towards a vague and still unidentified supernatural, has urged us to incarnaour dreams and even our fear before the new unknown in a strange symbolism which translatesthe contemporary soul as antique symbolism did for the soul of ancient times.

Only it is not our faith and our beliefs that we put forward; on the contrary, it is our doubts, ourfears, our boredoms, our vices, our despair and probably our agony."(1)

Symbolism was an idealistic movement, created by artists discontented with their culture. The stylewas refined, elegant, subtle, intellectual, and elitist.

If there is one central tenet held by Symbolist artists, it is that life is fundamentally mysterious, and thartist must respect and preserve this mystery.(2) Thus they insisted on suggestion rather thanexplicitness, symbols or equivalents rather than description, in both painting and poetry. Choosingmusic as their model, Symbolists found the creation of a mood to be as important as the transmission information, and sought to engage the entire mind and personality of the viewer by appealing to the

viewers emotions and unconscious mind as well as intellect.(3) The recognition that there was amajor portion of mental activity that is closed to the conscious mind confirmed the Symbolistsconviction that there was more to life than could be explained through positivist science.

Realists and Naturalists had found value in exact physical description because they believed that aclose study of visual appearances provided a direct approach to reality.(4) Symbolist artists and writelost confidence in reality as perceived through the senses, and sought other avenues of knowledge. Thdream was perhaps the most frequently cited alternative to conscious perception for nineteenth centur

philosophers and poets. In "Les Paradis Artificiels" Charles Baudelaire asserted that: "Common sensetells us that terrestrial things have but a faint existence and that reality itself is only found in dreams."(5) Awareness of this higher reality was not to be found through the usual senses or ordinaryconsciousness; alcohol, drugs and dreams were the gates to this transcendent realm. Fiction and realitbecame deliberately blurred, as both were but symbols of a higher, unseen reality. Idealists such asStphane Mallarm delighted in the ambiguous relationship of dream and reality. Thus the faun in

Mallarms "Laprs midi dun faun" asks himself, "Did I love a dream?" and is unable to answedecisively. The pervasive doubt concerning objective reality that characterized the Symbolist milieu


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encouraged a focus on inner experience, which could be seen in a variety of forms. Artists sought toexpress their inner states through primitivism, mysticism, and the psychology of the unconscious.

Many earlier Romantic artists and writers, such as Thomas Carlyle and Edgar Allan Poe, had sharedthe conviction of the unreality of life; as Poe put it: "All that we see or seem / is but a dream within a

dream."(6) Such an attitude made the naturalists insistence on truth to nature in a literal sense seemirrelevant. The Symbolists sought a truth to reality as they now conceived it, and demanded an art tha

was faithful to psychological realities. As the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch noted: "Nature is notonly what is visible to the eye it also shows the inner images of the soul the images on the backside of the eyes." Belgian Symbolist artists revived the tradition of visionary art that was deeply rootein earlier Flemish painting. Their visions now came from their own imagination, or from literature ofthe period.

Dreams afforded the Symbolists a perfect vehicle for presenting their own idealistic visions. Some,including Henry van de Velde and even Fernand Khnopff, were influenced by William Morris and thEnglish Arts and Crafts movement, and envisioned a vague Socialist utopia. Others, such as JeanDelville, imagined a world founded on mystical Christianity. As long as there was no connectionbetween the real world and the dream, however, the emphasis on dreams left the artists mired in a

realm of fantasy and inaction, removed from any social change.

Many Symbolist artists and writers of the late nineteenth century sought an antidote to the excesses omaterialism and positivism in mysticism or occult philosophy. Magic was to be the tool to make theirdreams become reality; visual images were seen as magical talismans, and poems were compared toincantations. Occultism filled many needs, providing a sense of participation in a universal communitas well as an elite circle of initiates, and a contact with eternal truths in an era of rapid change. Latenineteenth century mysticism was shaped by the ongoing scientific and philosophical revolutions of tperiod. Occultists combined the psychological discovery of the unconscious with the mystical theory other planes of existence to create a new synthesis. The image of the artist as seer or priest was basic nineteenth century art theory. Convinced that the unconscious was the source of both creativity andoccult vision, certain artists now assumed the guise of medium and hypnotist.

1. Emile Verhaeren, "Silhouettes d'Artistes: Fernand Khnopff," L'Art Moderne, no. 37, Sept. 12, 1886, p. 290.

Translation mine, original text:

"Un recul formidable de l'imagination moderne vers le pass, une enqute scientifique norme et des

passions indites vers un surnaturel vague et encore indfini nous ont pouss incarner notre rve et

peut-tre notre tremblement devant un nouvel inconnu dans un symbolisme trange qui traduit l'me

contemporaine comme le symbolisme antique interprtait l'me d'autrefois.Seulement nous n'y mettons point notre foi et nos croyances, nous y metons, au contraire, nos doutes,nos affres, nos ennuis, nos vices, nos dsespoirs et probablement nos agonies."

2. In a sense Paul Gauguins relief carving Soyez Mysterieuses (1890) sums up this goal of the Symbolistmovement. See H.R. Rookmaaker, Gauguin and 19th Century Art Theory, Amsterdam, 1972, pp. 220-224, and

Vojtech Jirat-Wasiutynski, Gauguin in the Context of Symbolism, New York, 1976.

3. The music and writings of Richard Wagner were very important for Symbolist aesthetics. One evidence

of the strength of Wagners influence is the length of Max Nordaus attack on him in The Richard


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Wagner Cult,Degeneration (1892), translated by G.l. Mosse, New York, 1968, pp. 171-213.

4. For instance, Claude Monet, quoted by William Seitz, Monet and Abstract Painting, College ArtJournal, vol. 16, 1956, p. 45: I am simply expending my efforts upon a maximum of appearances inclose correlation with unknown realities. When one is on the plane of concordant appearances one cannot be

far from reality, or at least what we can know of it...

5. Charles Baudelaire, Les Paradis Artificiels, in Baudelaire, Prose and Poetry, translated by Arthur

Symons, New York, 1926, p. 235.

6. Edgar Allan Poe, A Dream Within a Dream (1827), The Portable Poe, New York, 1972, p. 599.

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