Symbolism
1999
First Published
4.10
Average Rating
256
Number of Pages
To clothe the idea in perceptible form, proposed the poet Jean Moreas in his 1886 "Manifesto of Symbolism". It was in France and Belgium, the cradles of literary Symbolism, that Symbolist painting was born. It plunged headlong into the cultural space opened up by the poetry of Baudelaire and Mallarme and by the operas of Wagner. Symbolist painters sought not to represent appearances but to express "the Idea," and the imaginary therefore plays an important part in their work. "Dream" was their credo; they execrated, with a fanatical hatred, impressionism, realism, naturalism, and the scientistic. The main principle of Symbolism, that of "correspondences," was to attain harmony between all the different arts, or even to realise the total work of art (Gesamtkunstwerk) that Wagner had dreamt of creating. What we rediscover today, after a period of neglect, is Symbolist painting is essential to our understanding of modern art, not only because it spread across the world like wildfir
Avg Rating
4.10
Number of Ratings
226
5 STARS
37%
4 STARS
42%
3 STARS
16%
2 STARS
3%
1 STARS
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