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Symbolist Movement
Gustave Moreau
and
Odilon Redon
were the greatest
painters of the
Symbolist movement. The
movement was an artistic
uprising opposed to
Naturalism, Realism and
Impressionism. Moreau
stated "I am dominated
by one thing, an
irresistible, burning
attraction towards the
abstract. The expression
of human feelings and
the passions of man
certainly interest me
deeply, but I am less
concerned with
expressing the motions
of the soul and mind
than to render visible,
so to speak, the inner
flashes of intuition
which have something
divine in their apparent
insignificance and
reveal magic, even
divine horizons, when
they are transposed into
the marvelous effects of
pure plastic art."
Jean Moreas's Symbolist Manifesto, published in Le Figaro in 1886, stated that realism was obsolete and declared that symbolism was the model to be treasured hence forth. The basic philosophy of this aesthetic movement was a belief that the passing tangible world is not true reality, but a reflection of the unseen Absolute. Odilon Redon asserted ""I have placed there a little door opening on to the mysterious. I have made stories." The writings of Edgar Allan Poe, and Joris Karl Huysmans, and the Gothic and Romanticism style were major influences. Painters based their imagery on magical, sacred and occasionally mythological themes.
Symbolist Writers: Joris-Karl Huysmans, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, T. S. Eliot, Renée Vivien, William Blake, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Albert Samain, Rémy de Gourmont
A List of the Greatest Symbolist Painters
Man Ray American 1890-1976
Odilon Redon (1840-1916)
Edvard Munch Norwegian, 1863-1944
Gustave Moreau French 1826-1898
William Blake British, 1757-1827
Key Descriptive Words and Phrases associated with Symbolist Painting - emotional effects, emotional experience, avant-garde, nineteenth-century, Les Fleurs du mal, Charles Baudelaire, Edgar Allan Poe, psychological depths, symbolic colors, exaggerated imagery, human psyche, exaggeration, primitivism, transparent colors, self-expression, expression intensity, psychological, symbolic themes, universal subject matter, industrial modern age, individual genius, sense of otherness, otherworldly
Without free will, art remains bound by the chains imposed by the clergy. Imagination must be permitted to take wing and fly as the stout pigeon in the park flutters in the garden of magnificence and finally lunacy. ~ Gustav Moreau Quote
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