Symbolism
and the Dialectics of Retreat
Symbolism: Fin de Siècle Europe
Symbolism was a flight from modernity, a Primitivist critique of
European culture, a reaction against 19th century’s dominant faith in
science and technology.
The objective, optical “realism" of Impressionism 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."
Paul Gauguin
Symbolism and Decadence
Subjective vision
“Correspondances“ by Charles Baudelaire, 1857
(a literal translation from the French)
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.
Charles Baudelaire's Theory of Correspondences in which objects
become signs for the artist's personal ideas and feelings includes the
idea of "Synesthesia" in which the five 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’ 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
(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
James Ensor, detail of Entry of Christ into Brussels in 1889
Compare with (right) Hieronymus Bosch (Netherlandish c. 1450-1516)
Christ Carrying the Cross, ca. 1515-1516, oil on wood.
James Ensor, The Intrigue, 1890, oil on canvas
Compare: Francisco Goya (Spanish, 1746-1828), The Witches Sabbath
(detail) 1820-23, fresco transferred to canvas
Hieronymus Bosch, Christ Carrying the Cross, ca. 1515-1516, oil on wood.
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
“The prince of mysterious dreams” (Huysmans)
Odilon Redon, “Death, My
Irony Exceeds All Others,”
from To Gustave Flaubert,
1889, lithograph, 10 X 7”
Franz von Stuck (German
Symbolist, 1863 -1928) Sin, oil
on canvas, 1893, 37 × 23 in
Femme fatale
Edvard Munch (Norwegian Symbolist-Expressionist 1863-1944)
The Vampire, oil on canvas, 1893. Femme fatale
Edvard Munch (Norwegian Symbolist-Expressionist 1863-1944)
Self Portrait with Cigarette, 1895, oil on canvas,110.5 x 85.5 cm.
Munch lived in Paris off and on between 1889-1892
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/02/12/arts/design/20090213-MUNCHAUDIOSS/index.html Open link for a short slide show commentary on the major 2009
“Edvard Munch: Influence, Anxiety, Myth” Chicago Art Institute exhibition
Munch, Puberty, 1895, oil on canvas, 60 x 43”
Edvard Munch, The Dance of Life, 1899-1900, oil on canvas, 49 1/2 x 75,” National
Gallery, Oslo, from the series, The Frieze of Life, which contained most of Munch’s major
paintings
Munch, The Lonely Ones,
woodcut, 1894, and painting,
1935
Edvard 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
“As he walked across a bridge with friends at sunset he was seized with despair
and ‘felt a great, infinite scream pass through nature.’”
Edvard Munch, Madonna, 18957, color lithograph, 24 x 17”
Femme fatale
Gustav Klimt (Austrian Symbolist / Secessionist, 1862-1918) Death & Life, 1916
(Arnason seems to be in error)
Gustav Klimt, Idyll, 1884, Oil on canvas, 49.5 x 73.5 cm
Vienna, 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 (Austrian Art Nouveau)
Above the entrance:
To every age its art
and to art its freedom
Gustav Klimt was a founder of the Vienna Secession
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, 1902
Casein paint on stucco, 220 x 470 cm
Vienna Secession Building, Jugendstijl details of front. Designs attributed to
Koloman Moser (Austrian Painter and Designer, 1868-1918)
Koloman Moser, Bookcase, 1903, made by Caspar Hrazdil, Vienna, Thuya
and Lemon Wood, Brass, and Glazed Glass, 57 x 39 x 16 in.
(right) Moser, cover design for Ver Sacrum (Rite of Spring), international
Jugenstijl magazine of Vienna Secession, published from January 1898 to
October 1903
Koloman Moser, Stained glass window for St. Leopold’s Church (Kirche Am
Steinhof), 1905-7, the church of Vienna’s psychiatric hospital, Otto Wagner,
architect.
The Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna
Workshop), an Arts & Crafts
Movement, established in 1903,
brought together architects, artists
and designers committed to design
(primarily jewelry, fabrics for
clothing, ceramics and pottery,
and furniture).
(right) the Stoclet Palace,
Brussels, Belgium, designed by
Josef Hoffmann and built by the
Weiner Werkstätte, 1905-11, This
integration of architects, artists,
and artisans makes it an example
of Gesamtkunstwerk: the first aim
of the Vienna Workshop.
Wiener Werkstätte logo
Auguste Rodin, Gates of Hell, 1880-1917, with detail (left)
Symbolist
Detail of Rodin’s Gates of Hell: Fugit Amor
Modernist aesthetics of fragmentation and the
issue of “originality” (vs. the copy / reproduction) as a modernist myth
Sculpture exhibition Paris World Fair 1900
(left) Auguste Rodin (French Sculptor, 1840-1917) in studio with collection
of antique sculptures: fragments with Balzac study
(right) artist among his “fragments”
Rodin, Detail of Gates of Hell with The Thinker and sources:
Michelangelo and Durer
Michelangelo, Last
Judgment, 1535
Night, Michelangelo, 1520–34
Durer, Melancholia, 1515
Constantin Brancusi (Romania, 1876-1957)
(left) Vitellius, 1898
(right) Brancusi in Paris studio, 1933
The Saint of Montparnasse
Brancusi was an admirer of 17th c.
Tibetan monk and poet, Milarepa
of the Himalayas
(left) Brancusi, Sleep, 1908
(right) Medardo Rosso (Italian 1858-1917) Ecce Puer, 1896
“We are nothing but a play of light” (Rosso)
Constantin Brancusi, Child Supplicant, bronze 1906, and Newborn, 1915 (right)
Brancusi, Sleeping Muse, life-size, bronze, 1910
Brancusi, The Origin of the World, 1924
Matisse’s (modernist) quest for the essential (true) “sign” is shared by Brancusi
Constantin Brancusi, clockwise from upper left: Supplicant Child, 1906, Sleeping Muse 1910;
Newborn, 1915; and two versions of The Origin of the World, 1920s
Constantin Brancusi, The Kiss, 1907 version (left) and the Memorial park at Tîrgu Jiu,
Romania showing the The Gate of the Kiss, 1937 and part of contemplation group
The Kiss, which symbolizes the marriage of the
material and the spiritual, life and death, and
in general the dialectical unification of the
dualities of human experience
Brancusi, Table of Silence, Memorial Park at Tirgu Jiu, Romania, 1937
Brancusi, Endless Column, Memorial park at Tirjiu Jiu
cast iron with copper coating, 1937
Brancusi, Endless Column, (left) under reconstruction, 1999
(center) Segments of Endless Column
(right) Donald Judd, Untitled, 1970
Brancusi, Bird in Space, 1925, marble, stone, and wood
Brancusi’s Paris studio 1927 – photographs by artist
“All my life I have sought the essence of flight. Don’t look for mysteries.
I give you pure joy. Look at the sculptures until you see them. Those closest to God
have seen them”
Brancusi studio, Pompidou Center,
Paris