Wed 24th October, 2012
Inter-Disciplinary Victorian Reading Group (3.30pm-5, F25B, History of Art Dept
Millburn House)
Victorian Mysticism and Symbolist Art:
Overarching Questions / themes for the readings:
What are the types of mysticism propounded ?
What kinds of relationships are there between those mysticisms and visual representation or
theories of aesthetics?
And more simply, consider the relationship between art and mysticism within these examples
Discuss definitions and examples of Symbolist art
Invite discussion of 19th C understandings or articulations of mysticism in all media
Notes:
I chose a range of British sources for the foundation of the Symbolist art movement.
Symbolism has more commonly been seen as originating in a French or European literary
movement, this session serves to highlight some of the British artistic origins. Equally
recognised here is that the Symbolist Manifesto in literature was published in 1886 by
Jean Moréas. However visual artists were less likely to publish such theoretical charters in
the nineteenth century, and the emergence of Symbolist painting has thus suffered and
been harder to chart, or taken longer in the scholarship. The significant art exhibition The
Age of Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Watts, Symbolism in Britain 1860-1910, (Tate Britain,
1997) was the first to incorporate into the scholarship (or re-incorporate into the
narrative) some British readings and important artworks, but British Symbolism atill
remains a gap in the scholarship. These readings help to enrich the story of Symbolist art,
showing a continuum from the Arts and Crafts strain of artists, architects and artisans,
including Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones.
Definitions of Symbolist art – see PowerPoint presentation slides:
Symbolist painters believed that art should reflect an emotion or idea rather than represent the
natural world in the objective, quasi-scientific manner embodied by Realism and
Impressionism.