SYMBOLIST ART IN CONTEXT

SYMBOLIST ART IN CONTEXT
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I
he Symbolist movement was born on September 18, 1886, when Jean Moreas, a
Greek poet living in Paris, published his manifesto on Symbolism in the literary supplement to Le Figaro. 1 By publishing his manifesto in Paris's oldest
newspaper-which had the highest circulation of any daily in the city-Moreas
established his theory of Symbolism as authoritative. Moreas's article provoked
an avalanche of writings about Symbolism in French newspapers and journals. 2 Artists, critics,
and writers presented views that differed considerably but offered somewhat consistent formulations of the character, objectives, and processes of Symbolist works. All opposed Naturalism and advocated that works of art suggest ideas rather than describe appearances. They
defined artists as gifted individuals, geniuses, who possessed a special capacity to discern and
convey invisible realities. These realities were often accessed through the unconscious, particularly dreams.
A MOVEMENT IS BORN
Moreas delineated a growing literary theme discussed by leading Parisian poets and critics, who
proclaimed the superiority of this new, antiestablishment movement. Moreas's manifesto
responded to an article published by a rival critic, Polish-born Teodor de Wyzewa, about the contemporary poet Stephane Mallarme. In that article, published in Paris's first Symbolist journal,
La Vogue, Wyzewa declared: "Everything is a symbol, every molecule contains the handwrituniverse ... and art, the expression of all symbols, ought to be an idealized drama,
annulling the naturalistic representations whose deepest meanings are found
the soul of the poet." 3 Here Wyzewa drew on the authority of science to validate his ideas;
to molecules suggests a familiarity with biochemistry. Significant strides in bacterihad heightened awareness that cells are the building blocks of all living matter and the
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corollary that all entities in the universe are physically interconnected. Investigations in
comparative anatomy, psychology, and physiology led to the related beliefin a collective human
unconscious, whose depths only geniuses could comprehend.
Wyzewa's formulation of Symbolism as a school of thought might have struck Moreas as
vague, but his own was also ambiguous. Moreas-referring to the poet's special intuitionannounced that the goal of Symbolism was "to clothe the Idea in a form perceptible to the
senses." The "Idea'' could be any thought that the artist wanted to express, and Moreas suggested
two ways to accomplish this. The more conservative approlch involved representing"concrete
phenomena" such as nature and human action as embodiments of "primordial ideas."4 The
second, more subversive approach was to use "an archetypal and complex style: pure sounds,
densely convoluted sentences" to effect Symbolism's synthesis." 5 "Archetypal" and "complex;'
"pure" and "convoluted" -such terms suggest baffiing paradoxes. And indeed, straightforward
communication mattered little to some artists. Moreas's statement is particularly significant in
the context ofvisual art because he proposed that ideas could best be conveyed through abstract
signifiers, a notion supporting the technical/ compositional definition of Symbolism.
Moreas concluded his manifesto on a wistful note: "Symbolism requires ... the good, luxuriant, and lively French from the days ... ofFran<;:ois Rabelais, of Villon, ofRutebeu£ and of so
1
--------~-.--Y!J&!L~\!ll,~-~;;.~~~~..w~'.::h~~o..w.ere free and took aim with the sharpest words, like the archers of
E. von Baumgarten, Civilisation, from]ugend I, no. 25 ( 1 89 6): 407. Photo: Per Nordahl.
ancient Thrace." 6 For Moreas, who c~;~id~r~d Symbolism TD. militant opposition w the status
quo, these free-spirited and outspoken fifteenth- and sixteenth-century French literary mavericks were models of daring and originality who could inspire the Symbolists. On the one hand,
~e German sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies's investigations of contemporary social change
Moreas called for a new kind ofliterary product; on the other, he directed writers to mine the
clanfy the context in which Symbolism evolved. 9 Tonnies studied the problematic transition
national past for the raw materials from which to construct it.
from traditional village life, with its security and networks of kinship, to a modern industrial
While drawing inspiration from the national past might seem incompatible with the produc-
society that reduced an individual's worth to the cash value of his labor. In Community and
tion of modern works, such a paradoxical strategy was characteristic of the way in which artists
Civil Society, published in 1887, Tonnies observed that the shifi: from traditional to modern
and intellectuals expressed dissatisfaction with life in the final decades of the nineteenth century.
society required that cultural practice, consensus, and personal relationships based on trust
There was much to grumble about in the 1880s, particularly in Paris. Those needing continuity
yield to legal policy, coercion, and official relationships based on fear. He concluded that the
and stability to ensure their well-being would not have found it there. During the second half
-~~--consequences for individuals were catastrophic, a judgment with which many of his contem-
of the nineteenth century, Paris underwent a demographic and physical transformation unlike
poraries concurred. Reduced to cogs in the wheel of industrial capitalism, people were forced
that of any other European capital. To begin with, the city's population nearly tripled (from 1
to sacrifice self-esteem, health, happiness, pride in labor, and even their personal morality to
million to 2.7 million), an increase due to the relocation ofpeasants from all over France. Forced
benefit mostly the affiuent members ofsociety. Community and Civil Society seemed to confirm
to abandon rural areas as a result ofland reform, mechanization, and growing family size, they
t~e increasingly widespread cynicism about industrialization. It was the bourgeoisie's cynical
arrived at a rate of almost thirty thousand per year; they brought with them unfamiliar customs
disregard for the working and peasant classes that E. von Baumgarten depicted in an illustration,
and incomprehensibkdialects. By 1880, fewer than half of Parisians had been born in Paris
sarcastically titled Civilisation, for the German journal]ugend (Fig. 1). Here an elegantly dressed
(Moreas and Wyzewa were both foreigners), and most of the buildings within the city limits
~.couple walks daintily across a field littered with skeletons that seem to pose more of an incon-
had been constructed during the preceding thirty years.7 Paris's medieval center had been razed
in the 1850s and its inhabitants evicted. The city's maze of narrow, crooked streets, lined with
venience than a stimulus to remorse.
Moreas expressed dissatisfaction with contemporary conditions and admired independent
buildings both majestic and modest-which documented centuries of architectural history-
thought and freedom, a common response among progressive intellectuals to escalating political
was demolished during the modernization campaign of Emperor Napoleon III (r. 1852-70 ). 8
· · · F
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P0lar1zat10n
m ranee. France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (1370 _ 71 ) exacerbated
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internal tensions, particularly when Emperor Napoleon III abdicated and was replaced by the
politician Adolphe Thiers, who became the first president of France's Third Republic. Thiers
had opposed the disastrous decision to declare war and made many concessions to the Germans
as part of the peace settlement. Parisians were enraged by Thiers's capitulation. In defiance,
sympathetic national guardsmen assumed control of the city, which was run for a brief period
by a coalition of democratically elected committees (the Commune). These committees fought
German occupation, restored essential services, and provided relief for those suffering under
the four-month siege. The Commune operated accordihg to the principles established by the
French Revolution of 1789: freedom, equality, and solidarity. When Thiers retook the city with
the aid of army troops in late May 1871, more than twenty thousand citizens were executed as
traitors during "Bloody Week:' and Thiers established the democratic Third Republic, which
action, and realism were not. Symbolist artists endorsed these restrictions but interpreted them
in different ways. Like their writer colleagues, Symbolist artists sought to clothe ideas in perceptible forms, while believing that art should direct viewers toward immaterial entities and
metaphysical truths. The particular artist's goals, instincts, and imagination determined the
specific forms that these creations assumed. In 1889 the critic Georges Vanor described an ambitious mission for Symbolists in his book L'Art s_ymboliste: "TI1e task of the symbolist poet will
be to discover the idea through its figural representation; to understand the relation of things
visible, perceptible, and tangible in the world to the intelligible essence in which they participate
... to clothe the idea in a figural signification and to express truths by images and analogies."13
The Austrian painter Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) echoed the ideas ofVanor in his pictorial
manifesto, Nuda Veritas (Naked Truth), which declared the presentation of unadorned truth as
the artist's mission (Plate
lasted until 1940.
Since France experienced a change of regime on average every fifteen years in the nineteenth
century, the founding of the Third Republic did not immediately inspire confidence. Indeed,
the final three decades of the nineteenth century were tumultuous, with two periods of particularly acrimonious political volatility: 1885-89 under Georges Boulanger and 1894-99 during
the Dreyfus Affair. 11 Anarchists, Bonapartists, republicans, royalists, and socialists all struggled
for control of the government. At the time Mon~as was writing, at the beginning of 1886, President Jules Grevy had recently appointed the reactionary General Boulanger minister of war.
Boulanger's desire for retribution (against Germany), revision (of the constirution), and restoration (of the Bourbon monarchy) attracted the support of both Bonapartists and royalists and
threatened the liberal, egalitarian foundation of the fledgling Third Republic. In 1889 Boulanger
contemplated a coup d'etat that, had he succeeded, would have fulfilled the pessimistic expectations of those who considered France incapable of maintaining a stable government. In this
context, the nostalgia, social alienation, and yearning for autonomy and novelty that Moreas
expressed in his manifesto seem understandable, if not predictable.
l) . 14
Truth stands between gilded inscriptions bearing the painting's
title and an aphorism by the German Romantic poet Friedrich Schiller that encourages artists
to remain faithful to their individual vision: "You can't please everyone through your effort and
artwork-that makes it less right. To please many is bad." 15 The woman is an allegorical figure
whose nudity symbolizes unadorned truth. Indeed, this beautiful figure hides nothing: her
flowing tresses signify both naturalness and intimacy, whereas the genteel women of Klimt's
time always wore their hair up in public. In depicting her pubic hair, a violation of the rules of
decorum promulgated by art academies, Klimt was insisting on honesty. He transformed Truth
into a modern symbol through what Reinhold Heller describes as "the pronounced artificiality
of the image and its pronounced reference to its own flat surface:' 16 The inscriptions, stylized
scrolls, random daisies, swirling blue vapor, and slithering serpent reinforce the unreality of
the scene, as does Klimt's use of gold leaf, a nontraditional material that Symbolist artists
favored because it explicitly signaled artificiality (as it suggested richness and spirituality for
medieval artists). Viewed through a misty vapor, Truth, motionless and entranced, holds a
magnifying glass to enhance perception, which here is intuitive rather than visual. While nakedness is often associated with moral purity, the presence of the serpent recalls Eve and original
sin. Did Klimt intend to suggest that the procreative impulse represented the naked truth? Was
he proposing the shocking idea that erotic urges were honest and decent? Did he intend to
EVOCATION, NOT NARRATION
Two weeks after Moreas published his manifesto, Rene Ghil, another critic in the crowded
circle of Parisian Symbolist intellectuals, addressed the readers of the Symbolist journal La
Decadence-numbering in the hundreds in contrast to Le Figtzro's tens of thousands. In his piece,
Ghil for the first time linked art to Symbolism, although he did not suggest that art might be
subvert the customary interpretation of naked truth? 17
Conventional mores were certainly on the artist's mind. The year before he painted Nuda
Veritas, Klimt fell under the critique of the Austrian censors, who forced him to conceal the
genitalia of the mythic hero Theseus in a poster that he had designed for a Vienna Secessionist
exhibition. That Nuda Veritas condoned the free exercise of erotic impulses seems plausible in
ui<Jl!l
used to achieve Symbolist objectives: "To symbolize is to evoke, not to say and narrate and
paint:' 12 Ghil clearly had a limited vision of art's capacities: for him, painting involved detailed
and realistic description; he evidently could not envision its evocative potential. Still, Ghil's
tumored to have produced more than a dozen children, had a lifelong fascination with the
Thus, despite its text and legible details, Nuda Veritas's ambiguity permits multiple
Uncertainty was a part of the modern condition that found expression in
declaration of Symbolism's boundaries clarified the ideas Moreas had presented. To Ghil, evocation, insinuation, and suggestion were acceptable modes of expression, but description, logical
auuv Klimt, who never married but had a series of concurrent relationships
.0vTrncioJ11sr
artworks.
13
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MUSIC
Moreas's suggestion of using "pure sounds" as a strategy for conveying ideas evokes music, one
of the most important influences on Symbolist artists. 18 Indeed, the German philosopher Arthur
Schopenhauer, whose writings helped shape Symbolist theory, proclaimed music "the most
powerful of all ans:' !9 Schopenhauer, a skilled flutist, believed that music's direct appeal to the
emotions and the imagination made it superior to all other arts. This notion emerged earlier in
the writing and artistic practice of Romantics such as Eugene Delacroix20 and Philipp Otto
Runge and continued as an undercurrent throughout the nineteenth century. A belief in the
superiority of music resurfaced as a key aspect of Symbolism and was reflected in tides ("Death
Listens;' "The Voice of Evil"), in subject matter, and in compositions that aspired to the fluidity
and suggestiveness of music. An interest in music can be attributed partly to artistic goals and
partly to changes in the sonic environment. For artists who rejected mimesis, music provided
inspiration for the reformulation of their artistic approach. Music's appeal was also understandable in an era when noise from the industrial and urban environment supplanted both silence
and the sounds of nature.
2
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Dance at Le ,Moulin de l,i Galette, 1876, oil on canvas,
I31 x 175 cm. Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF i,739 ). Photo© Erich Lessing/Art
Resource, New York.
NATURALISM AND A WORLD OF FLUX
businessman, George Train, did it in sixty. Spreading railway networks linked major cities to
Symbolism in the visual arts was first described in April 1887, half a year afi:er the publication
ofMoreas's manifesto. In an article tided "A Symbolist Painter;' published in the Brussels journal
L'Art moderne, the art critic Emile Verhaeren defined Symbolism in opposition to Naturalism,
which had "led to the fragmentation of the object through merciless description, painstaking
microscopic analysis." 21 Verhaeren's condemnation ofNaturalism reflected transformations in
art and society since the 1830s, when Naturalism had initially rebelled against academic art.
Afi:er fifi:y years, in his opinion, Naturalism was no longer modern.
Certainly, Naturalism originated as a culturally and politically progressive alternative to the
then-dominant academic art, which favored formulaic depictions of episodes from history,
myth, or literature, as well as a narrow range of nature subjects, composed in accordance with
longstanding guidelines. Because of its beginnings in eighteenth-century academies sponsored
by absolutist monarchs, academic art was perceived as implicitly antidemocratic, anti-individualistic, and antagonistic to originality and inventiveness. In contrast, Naturalist artists acted
independently, seeking to represent the visible world objectively and accurately without any
other restrictions on subject matter or technique.
With its focus on outward appearances, Naturalism was ideally suited to record the rapidly
evolving everyday world of the second half of the nineteenth century. The pace of this evolution
was epitomized by changes in transportation. 22 In 1873, when Jules Verne published his bestseller
Around the World in Eighty Days, such a feat was still a fantasy, but by 1889 the American
journalist Nellie Bly could circle the earth in seventy-two days; three years later an American
industrial areas and ports and later to each other. Once national networks had been created,
international connections followed: the Orient Express, a luxury train linking London with
Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), began service in 1883. The development of steel-plated
steamships, particularly the replacement of the paddle wheel with the propeller in the 18Sos,
streamlined the transportation of goods and people across oceans.
The improvements in transportation during this period profoundly changed the character
of cities. Streetcars began to appear in the 1830s, at first powered by horses and later by steam
. ,;incleleqricity; they facilitated the rapid growth of cities by enabling people to live farther from
their place of work. The bicycle and later the automobile let individuals (initially only the affiuent) move rapidly on their own terms. The invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham
Bell in 1876 further accelerated the exchange of information. In 1880 a concert was broadcast
by telephone (from Zurich to Basel), and in the same year the London Times installed a telephone in the House of Commons for quicker reporting ofpolitical events. By 1885, thirty-three
German cities were linked by telephone to Berlin (but not to each other), and by 1887, private
Jelephonesubscriptions were becoming common: there were 150,000 in the United States (one
per 400 inhabitants), 26,000 in Great Britain (one per l,200 ), and 22,000 in Germany
per 2,200 ). This exponential expansion of communications made the world seem a much
place within one generation. 23
artists, especially the Impressionists, documented this exhilarating world. Paintings
"~'-'uttct at Le lvloulin de la Galette (1876; Fig. 2) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
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depicted popular locales where social classes mixed with a freedom unimaginable a generation
earlier. Hovering above the dancers are newly installed gaslights, which allowed this popular
outdoor Parisian cafe to extend its hours and let summer socializing continue late into the
evening. Renoir captured the perceptible light and atmosphere, visible as they affect surrounding objects. The documentation of light and atmosphere was a primary concern of Impressionist artists, who pursued the naturalist impulse to represent the visible world accurately by
examining the subtle factors that influenced it. 24 Many Impressionists studied scientific developments in color theory and optics to better understandrt:he forces shaping their perception of
the visible world. 25
THE SECRET SPACE OF DREAMS
In the opening line of his manifesto, Moreas declared Symbolism "an enemy ... of declamation ... of objective description;' 26 an assessment that Verhaeren subsequently endorsed.
"Symbolism will do the opposite [of Naturalism]. ... In Symbolism fact and world become
mere pretexts for ideas; they are handled as appearances, ceaselessly variable, and ultimately
manifest themselves only as the dreams of our brains." 27 Mon~as and Verhaeren renounced
Naturalism's preoccupation with detachment and the realm of the senses; they placed empiricism at the service of imagination. Verhaeren's wording was especially appropriate given the
central importance of dreams to the Symbolists.
The French artist Paul Gauguin ( 1848-190 3) alluded to the inspirational character of dreams
in his letters and diaries, acknowledging their power to resolve paradoxes that the intellect could
not penetrate: "my dream, with the boldness of the unconscious, solves many questions that
my understanding does not approach." 28 In a letter to Gauguin's protege Emile Bernard
(1868-1941), thewriterJoris-KarlHuysmans endorsed the primacy of dreams: "You are, I think,
absolutely right regarding your concept of art. The dream should be the construction, the act
of faith of a soul, and the manifestation of a single soul representing all others, changing while
remaining itself and affirming itself by liturgies that are at once different and the same; architecture, sculpture, painting, the glass conceived by itself." 29
Three decades earlier in his "Poem of Hashish;' the poet Charles Baudelaire recognized two
distinct types of dreams: those related to the everyday life of the dreamer and those that are
Odilon Redon, The Smiling Spider, 1881, charcoal on paper, 49.5 x 39 cm. Musee du Louvre, Paris
"absurd and unforeseen;' which Baudelaire referred to as "hieroglyphic" and in which he dis-
(RF 2 9932-). Photo© Reunion des Musees Nationaux/ Art Resource, New York (photographer:
Michele Bellot).
cerned "the supernatural side oflife." 30 It was the supernatural that fascinated the Symbolists,
who saw in dreams a gateway to universal truths. Artists as well as writers explored this gateway, and it became a central motif in the work of Odilon Redon (1840-1916), whose first
lithographic series, In the Dream, appeared in
1882. 31
The Smiling Spider (Fig. 3), a charcoal
drawing produced while Redon was working on In the Dream, is a hybrid creature that could
emerge only in the secret space of dreams. 32 The spider's friendly eyes and toothy grin look weird
but not threatening; it appears amiable, not evil and dangerous, as it balances on three legs as
ifdancing·· R ecl on
11
..
le posmon
11
" " ' " r.n"
· al sth e fantasnc
· nature of his spider by giving it ten, rather than eight,
sign
fh .
o t e viewer-at eye-level with the creature-indicates its colossal size.
affable spider subverted the normative view, recorded by Hippolyte Taine in On Intel-
( 1870 ). There, Taine described a man arriving home to find "objects transformed into
c,~pccti~rs, representing sometimes huge spiders which ran at him to drink his blood."33 A satirical
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4 A BientiJtle coup de balqi(Soon, the Sweep), in Actualites, no. 34, n.d. Photo: Per Nordahl.
Paul Gauguin,A1anao tupaupau, or Spirit ofthe Dead Watching,
I892,
oil on burlap mounted
on canvas, 72-4 x 92-4 cm. Albright-Knox Art Gallery; Buffalo, New York. A. Conger
Goodyear Collection, I96s.
print from 1870 using similar imagery represented France's optimism at the onset of the Franco-
peoples, such as a mystical bond to the unseen realm. 37 Dreams, according to this interpretation,
Prussian War (Fig .. 4). Here, Wilhelm, the emperor of Prussia and the first emperor of a unified
could be sources of comfort to the living; mediums provided a vehicle for communication
Germany, is depicted as a spider standing his ground on his web amid ensnared flies representing
between this world and the world beyond. 38
Denmark and the German provinces of Bavaria, Hanover, and Hesse. Republican France is a
Gauguin's lvfanao tupaupau, or Spirit
of the Dead H/fztching (Fig.
5), 39 painted during his
broom about to sweep away the anxious Wilhelm-spider, who in reality swiftly vanquished
two-year stay in Tahiti (June 1891-September 1893), implied the inferiority of darker races as well
French forces and besieged Paris.
as their privileged rapport with the beyond. Clues to its meaning are found in Gauguin's letters
Scientists were eager to understand dreams and dreaming. While Sigmund Freud's Interpreta-
and journals, in which he explicated his works, but these sources, combined with information
ofDreams (1899) was the most influential investigation, it was by no means the first. In
about his life, also provide evidence for alternate explanations. Gauguin's motivations for high-
1861 the Breslau philosophy professor Karl Albert Schemer sought to document and analyze
Iighting a particular reading of his works are themselves often suspect. In his autobiographical
dreams in The Lifi ofthe Dream. 34 There he explained that dreams clothe themselves in a sym-
novel Noa Noa (1891 ), Gauguin wrote: "When I opened the door. .. I saw Tehura ... immobile,
bolic language (ofi:en sexual) that could be decoded. While the boundaries between conscious
naked, lying face downward flat on the bed with her eyes inordinately large with fear. She looked
and unconscious, normal and deviant were clearly defined among "civilized" peoples, the Ger-
at me, and seemed not to recognize me .... Might she not with frightened face take me for one
man psychologist Paul Radestock posited that the situation was different in "unccivilized"
regions-from ~eensland to Greenland. In Sleep ,mdDream (1879 ), Radestock observed that
demons and specters, one of the Tupapaiis, with which the legends of her race people
·.SJ<;epiess nights ?" 40 While Gauguin's remarks suggest that Spirit ofthe Dead TVtitchingis explicitly
many indigenous peoples believed that the dead were constantly present although they appeared
an examination of the painting yields another interpretation. Noting the
tion
to the living only in dreams. 35 Radestock's notion of cultutal differences in what people dreamed
of Gauguin's thirteen-year-old mistress, whose gender is concealed
about relied on the racialist theories ofArthur de Gobineau's four-volumeEssay on the Inequality
position on the bed, Stephen Eisenman speculates that Gauguin launched "an assault
ofthe Human Races (1853 and 1855). 36 Radestock discerned special powers among "primitive"
the tradition of the European female nude;' as Edouard Manet had done before him.41
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7 Max Klinger, Anxieties, Plate 7 from A Glove, 1881 (published 1893), etching on chine colic.
Indiana University Art Museum (?6.133g). Photo by Michael Cavanaugh and Kevin Montague.
While the fluidity between wakefulness and dreaming had long been accepted by non-West6 Edouard Manet,
O~ympia, 1863-65, oil on canvas, 130.5 x 190 cm. Musee d'Orsay, Paris (RF 644).
Photo ©l· Erich Lessing/ Art Resource, New York.
ern cultures, by the late nineteenth century psychologists, as well as artists and poets, had begun
to recognize its presence in Western cultures as well. Freud claimed, for example, that dreams
function universally as mediators between consciousness and unconsciousness because they
translate hidden desires and anxieties into symbolic form. 42 This is the subject of a series of
Eisenman's interpretation is strengthened by the fact that Gauguin considered Manet a role
etchings by Max Klinger (1857-1920 ), A Glove, in which a lady's glove retrieved from the ice
model and brought a reproduction of Manet's controversial O~ympia (exhibited at the Paris
by an admiring fellow skater (Klinger) at a rink in Berlin becomes a fetish object that initiates
a strange journey into the artist-subject's unconscious. In Anxieties (Fig. 7 ), Klinger sleeps, his
Salon of 1865) with him to Tahiti.
Olympia (Fig. 6) outraged audiences because it violated contemporary norms. While female
pitlow leaning against the treasured glove, which has
nudes were traditional artistic subjects, the confrontational gaze of Manet's model was unusually
doubt correspond to its psychological significance. A bald swimmer keeps an assortment of
aggressive. The subject'sverynamewas a common pseudonym for high-class prostitutes, an unsuit-
weird creatures, some mammalian, some amphibian, at bay and tries to warn Klinger of the
able subject for Europe's most prestigious art exhibition. Manet's uneven finish-Olympia
reach out in apparent search of their glove. All of this takes place in a watery environ-
appears flat and unmodeled, while the flowers are highly detailed-violated the standards of
(symbolic of the unconscious) during a lunar eclipse. Klinger shows how in the secret
both academic art and Naturalism. In Spirit ofthe Dead TVatching, Gauguin transformed Manet's
insolent figure into a Tahitian girl whose dark complexion contrasts with Olympia's pallor. This
assumed gigantic proportions that no
psychological states are transformed into symbolic forms that are incoherent
Jn'1t101cm:ati1re conscious standards.
inversion emerges in other ways as well: Tehura lies on her stomach and faces the opposite
i.J>.,::s11IIJ.1larlv, in Night (Fig. 8), the Swiss artist Ferdinand Hodler (1853-1918) substantiates Freud's
direction. Instead of an elegant Parisian boudoir, Tehura inhabits a rustic, incoherent space of
by revealing how dreams expose hidden fears. 43 Hodler, like Klinger, captures the
brightly patterned fabric. The abstract landscape on the wall behind Tehura contains faces,
intensely real space of dreams, furnished with components that seem logical but
feathers, leaves, and birds, and a column partially conceals a masked and cowled figure: the
c:ommunicates meanings intelligible only when present within the magical bound-
spirit of the dead. Real and imaginary beings coexist on the canvas. Gauguin's emphasis on
unconscious. Night, like Anxieties, is autobiographical. Hodler portrayed himself
surface-paint soaked into the coarse canvas, conspicuous brushwork, thick outlines, title
frightened in the night with a cowled figure-as in Gauguin's Spirit of the Dead
inscribed in the upper left-further inhibits a reading of Spirit of the Dead VVtitching as
over his lower torso. Draped in black and of indeterminate gender, the
realistic.
Cupies a central position both in the composition and in Hodler's consciousness:
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withdrawn from an 1891 exhibition, it appeared in Paris the same year at the Salon du Champsde-Mars organized by France's Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts. The French art critic Josephin
Pdadan wrote: "the nightmare kneeling, black and vaguely formed upon a chest, is really
frightening .... The picture is unforgettable." 47 Following uneventful showings abroad, Hodler
did not expectNightto provoke controversy when he submitted it to the Swiss National Exposition held in Geneva in 1896. But it did: Swiss censors hung a black cloth in its place. 48
EXPRESSING THE INEXPRESSIBLE
Verhaeren's statement that "Fact and world become mere pretexts for ideas" was echoed more
than a decade later by French artist-theorist Maurice Denis (1870-1943): "Symbolism was ...
8 Ferdinand Hodler, Night, 1890, oil on canvas, u6 x i,99 cm. Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland.
neo-platonic. Writers and painters came to agree that natural objects are signs denoting ideas;
that the visible is the manifestation of the invisible." 49 The urge to represent intangible entities
reflected a current of antimaterialism in European intellectual circles and an urge to explore
Hodler gazes at it in terror. The specter's position on, over, or beside Hodler's genitalia charges
new subjects in art. The growth of a free-market economy forced individuals to fend for them-
the image with erotic tension. The specter appears bent over and busy, but the nature of this
selves under conditions in which an investment of time and labor did not guarantee survival.
activity is obscure and therefore unsettling. We can only infer from Hodler's expression that it
The resultant fixation with making money led to a psychological imbalance addressed by nine-
is .far from pleasurable. Might it relate to castration anxiety, which Freud describes in The
teenth-century reformers-including optimistic Symbolists. At the same time, by the l88os, a
Interpretation ofDreams?
Freud posited that castration anxiety had two aspects: physical and metaphorical. This anxiety
younger generation of artists wanted to pursue a path more innovative than that of their Naturalist predecessors. Representing nonphysical entities appealed to young artists in part because
was aggravated in the late nineteenth century by parents threatening children's genitals with
the subjects were seldom explored in visual art and in part because such subjects relied on feeling
physical punishment (noted by Freud) and by fears prompted by sexual myths. For instance,
and intuition, cherished qualities that had seemingly vanished from modern life.
doctors warned of sperm depletion resulting from frequent copulation, devices designed to
Denis indicated that states of mind attracted artists' attention. Whereas Naturalist artists
prevent masturbation proliferated, and experts advised men over fifty to abstain from inter-
u6cu1nenn:d actions, Symbolists documented feelings and thoughts. The quest for visual
course in order to postpone death. 44 Metaphorical castration expressed fear of authority and
to psychological states such as despair, hope, jealousy, and sorrow preoccupied
loss of power. The latter particularly affected men, whose absolute social control was steadily
artists. Breton Eve, or Melancholy (Fig. 9 ), by Paul Serusier (1864-1927) evokes
being eroded. If the cowled figure in Hodler's Night is female, another interpretation, one
~hrough both title and form. Before eating the forbidden fruit from the Tree of the
informed by the predominant Roman Catholicism ofHodler's Geneva audience, emerges. The
·n.JLru·w1<:ucw.
of Good and Evil, Eve lived a carefree existence in Paradise. Afterwards, her con-
cowled figure assumes the "horse-ride" coitus position that the Catholic Church (dominant in
awakened with her realization that she had made a decision with dire consequences.
the western part of Switzerland, where Hodler resided) banned because of the belief that it
represented the profound sadness that accompanies such knowledge in Breton Eve,
primitive, biblical innocence to contemporary Breton peasants.
impeded procreation. To discourage its use, the church warned of dire consequences for men:
hernias, ulceration of the bladder and penis, or worse yet, effeminacy. 45 This interpretation is
Eve sits naked in a rocky pasture in Brittany. Her posture is self-contained, her head
especially compelling. For Hodler's acquaintances, Night's sexual tension was confirmed by the
thought. The figure's nudity, combined with the painting's tide, evokes the punish-
presence of his former mistress and his then-wife (whom he divorced in 189 l) among the sleep-
and Adam's disobedience, the consequence of which was a variety of impulses,
ers.46 Hodler directed viewers toward a particular interpretation by inscribing on the back of the
g the urge to procreate. Does Serusier's Eve regret succumbing to temptation, the
painting, "Some who go peacefully to bed in the evening will not wake up in the morning:'
ti()n of responsibilities, her awareness of mortality? Because Symbolist art suggests rather
Vanguard artists often had conflicts with the art establishment, which controlled an artist's
rrates, Serusier's painting resists attempts to limit its meaning. 'At the same time, the
access to the public through exhibitions. Hodler, for instance, constantly battled the conserva-
. \J:iistorical context and the artist's personal views restrict the range of plausible inter-
tive taste of art officials and his Swiss public. Although the mayor of Geneva ordered Night
employed the traditional medium of oil on canvas for this picture, but he
23
BEGINNINGS
BEGINNINGS
the woodcut expresses Munch's conviction that meditation while in an unhappy state stimulates
creativity. 51 Here, a man sits in a traditional reflective pose, his chin resting on his hand and his
elbow on his knee. The woodcut's gloomy subject reflects a sequence of reverses in the artist's
life during 1892: his friend August Strindberg had recently fled Munch's company, convinced
that Munch sought to kill him; a potentially lucrative commission by the Sociere des Cent
Bibliophiles to illustrate Charles Baudelaire's poetry collection Les Fleurs du mal (1857) was
abruptly withdrawn; and Munch was desperately poor. 52 The figure in Melancholy has an
ambiguous relationship to its setting: silhouetted against, yet integrated into, the bleak coastal
landscape. The trope of a melancholy man by the sea appeared in earlier works with which
Munch was likely familiar: Max Klinger's Night (from the series of etchings On Death, Part I,
1889) and Afonk by the Sea (1809-ro, Nationalgalerie, Berlin) by Caspar David Friedrich
(1774-1840 ). In both of these works, the expanse of the sea and the lapping of the waves evoke
the subject's profound and relentlessness thoughts. The unrealistic character of the landscape
in Munch's Jvfelancholy makes it uncertain whether it is imaginary or remembered, but an 1892
diary entry resolves the issue: "One evening I walked along the seashore. It sighed and sucked
around the stones. Long grey clouds streaked the horizon. Itlooked as ifeverythingwas dead-as
in another world. A landscape of death. Life began over there by the landing dock. There was
a man and a woman-and there came another man. With oars over his shoulder. And the boat
was tied up down there-ready to leave:' 53 Munch conflates this moment with another situation: the figure resembles his friend Jappe Nilssen, who in 1892 was in the midst of a love triangle
that ended in disappointmentY'
Munch experimented with print media in the 1890s as part of his search for new means of
expression. In 1896 he began making woodcuts, having already explored lithography and etching.
While Munch liked the reproducibility of the medium, many of his prints (including this one)
are singular works; afi::er printing and hand-coloring these images, he continued to carve the
wood block. 55 The coarse contours and exaggerations in form and color-particularly noticeable
in the foreground swirls and arabesques alluding to rocks and waves-reinforce an awareness
resulted from artistic choices intended to convey a psychological state .
. C()nsistent with Moreas's advice, both Serusier and Munch incorporated traditional elements
. . ih.theirworks. Serusier presupposed that his Roman Catholic French audience would be familiar
9 Paul Serusier, Breton Eve, or 1>1elancho~y, 1891, oil on canvas, 73 x 60 cm. Musee d'Orsay, Paris
(RF 19 8r-s). Photo© Reunion des Musees Nationaux/ Art Resource, New York (photographer:
J. Schormans).
~iFh the figure of Eve, while Munch alluded to conventional representations of melancholy.
;::>;'[he most famous of these is Albrecht Diirer's 1514 engraving Melancholia, in which a sullen
.t~ale figure sits with her elbow resting on her knee and her chin in her hand. Diirer's image
'. b!lg\:'.d to a long tradition of interest in this psychological state, as evidenced by the publica-
strayed from a conventional rendering by simplifying forms (clouds, rocky outcroppings), distort-
~J~i§~FP#.Robert Burro n's three-volume study, The Anatomy ofMelancholy, in 1621. Burton clas-
ing colors (blue rocks, orange bushes), and painting with clearly discernible brushstrokes. His
.. ~y~II)elancholy as a pathological state, its symptoms of despair, fear, hallucinations, and erotic
technique emphasizes that the image is artifice, reinforcing the painting's function as the visual
p~caused by an excess ofblack bile. 56 The title page of the 1621 edition consists of nine scenes
equivalent of a state of mind-melancholy-rather than a traditional "window" onto a view.
'.'~~gtheauthor's portrait and the title and publisher boxes (Fig. ro ). Two feature men seated
The 139 6 woodcut Melancholy, or Evening (Plate 2), by Edvard Munch (1863-1944) depicts
. ~eir heads resting in their hands, a pose reminiscent of Diirer's Afelancholia. The third
the same emotion in a different way. 50 Based on a painting of the same title executed in 1892,
. :of Burton's study, "Love Melancholy;' is particularly relevant to Munch's Jvfelancholy.
BEGINNINGS
In addition to this familiar concept of melancholy, a competing interpretation of melancholy
emerged in the fifteenth century, which held, as did Munch, that it inspired creativity. For the
Florentine philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499 ), melancholy signified genius in men and
insanity in women, a theory that accords with nineteenth-century attitudes about women as
the inferior antipode of men. 57
Denis's notion that phenomena "signify states of mind;' emerged in Auguste Rodin's Gates
~fHell (Fig. u ). 58 The Gates embody the conviction articulated by the critic Albert Aurier that
artists possessing a "transcendental capacity for emotion" force "symbols-that is, ideas-[ to J
rise out of the darkness and become animated, start living a life that is no longer our contingent
and relative life but a life of dazzling light that is the essential life, the life of art, the life of the
being." 59 Begun in 1880 as the portal for a new museum of decorative arts in Paris, the commission was never finished because the museum project was abandoned. In the two decades during
which Rodin (1840-1917) actively worked on the Gates, it functioned as a crucible for new
works and aesthetic experiments. In typical Symbolist fashion, the subject of the Gates-Dante's
Inferno-was not directly relevant to a museum of decorative arts but rather to more generalized
ideas about creativity and human desire. The poem was part of The Divine Comedy trilogy
composed between 1308 and 1321. The Inferno, the place of eternal suffering in the afterlife, was
populated by those whose yearnings and anguish (psychological as well as physical) remained
. imresolved, such as the tragic historical figures Ugolino della Gherardesca and Paolo Maltesta
and Francesca di Rimini. When her neglectful husband caught Francesca, impassioned by love
poetry, on the verge of her first kiss with her brother-in-law, Paolo (the subject of Rodin's famous
sculpture The Kiss, c. 1884, Rodin Museum, Philadelphia), he murdered them on the spot. Their
spirits remained united but tormented by the physical consummation denied them. Count
Ugolino della Gherardesca was unjustly accused of treason in the late thirteenth century by
Archbishop Ruggieri, who sentenced Ugolino, alongwith his sons and grandsons, to imprisonment and starvation. As the boys weakened and died, the survivors begged Ugolino to devour
them so that he could live longer. Ugolino, torn between hunger and love, desire and guilt,
perishedin a state of extreme physical and psychological distress.
For Rodin, the frustration, guilt, and regret described in Dante's Inferno represented the
Rodin's preliminary sketches reveal that he initially intended
L":'.'"'~>"!"'""the Gates into discrete panels (Fig.
.ri.<fltt.w'"·
12), in the tradition ofLorenzo Ghiberti's Gates
illustrations of episodes from the New Testament created in the fifteenth century
of Florence Cathedral. 61 Instead of designing a sequential narrative, however,
created swirling confusion that functioned as a pictorial metaphor for the uncertainty
·~~·!c\'.''""°i.1c1:.i.tggthat epitomize the human condition. Above the doors sits afigure, an image of
•aa.w.11v1y
that represents both Dante and Rodin. The unnatural torque of Dante/Rodin's
elbow on left thigh-expressed the turmoil of the creative process as well as the
human psyche. Like the setting in Munch's Melancho(y, the Gates are a giant thought10
Title page of The Anaton~y oj~Welancho/,y by Robert Burton, 1628 edition. Courtesy Lilly
Library, Indiana University, Bloomington.
BJ}le, a compositional strategy that emerged frequently in Symbolist art as a way of showing
BEGINNINGS
12
Auguste Rodin, Projectfor the Gates ofHell with The Thinker,
Adam, and Eve, 1880, pen and brown ink on paper, 16.5 x n.2
cm. Musee Rodin, Paris (D. 6940 ). Art© 2009 Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York/ ADAGP, Paris.
Symbolist presumption that images could represent ideas implied the modernist notion
meaning was contextual: new surroundings produced new meanings. Rodin's practice
.
'>
_'
figures to make new ones exemplified this concept. The head of Paolo, for
l
amwe, appears on both the Prodigal Son (1880-82, Los Angeles County Museum of Art)
male figure in Fugitive Love (1880-82, Musee Rodin, Paris). The Dante/Rodin figure
u Auguste Rodin,
Gates ofHell, begun 1880, bronze, 600 x 400 x roo cm. Iris & B. Gerald Cantor
Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, gifi: of the B. Gerald Cantor Collection (1985.86).
Gates has at least three identities depending on context: Dante (on the Gates), Rodin
th:<~:G:at1?sand as Rodin's grave marker), and, as discrete sculpture, The Thinker: a symbol of
29
30
BEGINNINGS
thought or melancholy. 62 Rodin would have embraced further interpretations: in a 19II inter-
BEGINNINGS
genius" in The Man ~f Genius (1889 ). 68 In fact, Lombroso deemed genius a neurosis. 6 9 He
view with Paul Gsell, he concurred with Aurier's belief that "the forms [art Jcreated should only
claimed that Jews had a rate of genius five times higher than the general population, a notion
provide a pretext for the emotion to expand indefinitely." 63
whose implications he explored in Anti-Semitism and lvfodern Science ( 18 94).
GENIUS
ARTIST AS CREATOR
For the Symbolists, art was allied to genius. In his influential book Contemporary Literature
Optimally, reward for the Symbolist artist-genius came through public appreciation, even
( 1889 ), Charles Morice asserted: "Genius consists-like Love and Death-in disengaging from
veneration: Symbolist literature often refers to the artist as God/ creator and Christ/ sufferer.
accidents, habits, prejudices, conventions, and all the contingencies [in favor of] the element
In an era of escalating friction between secular and religious interests, Symbolist rhetoric cele-
of eternity and unity that lie behind appearances, at the heart of every human essence." 64 Sym-
brated art as a means ofpursuing spirituality. Baudelaire declared: "The imagination is an almost
bolists claimed that insight into the human condition was a special gift-like musical or athletic
divine faculty which perceives at once, quite without resort to philosophic methods, the intimate
ability-which distinguished artists of genius. Vanor and Wyzewa noted the special insight of
and secret connections between things, correspondences and analogies;' in the introduction to
the true artist -poet, and Aurier-in his landmark article "Symbolism in Painting: Paul Gauguin"
his 1857 translation of Edgar Allan Poe's writings.7° Forty years later, Peladan echoed this belief:
(189r )-accorded special status to the artist-genius, citing Gauguin as a prime example. Aurier
''Artist, you are a priest: Art is the grand mystery and, as a result of your efforts to create a mas-
based his assertion of Symbolism's superiority over Realism and Naturalism on its intellectual
terpiece, a ray of divinity descends as on an altar." 71 Artist-geniuses-by virtue of their special
roots in the philosophy of Plato (quoting from The Republic) and legitimized Symbolist art as
insight into life's mysteries-could bypass the usual deductive method of ascertaining truth.
"identical to primitive art, to art as it was intuited by the instinctual geniuses of the dawn of
humariffy." 65
Some of Aurier's ideas were nonetheless radical for their time. He deemed the artist a quasicfivi.f1e..cl"eator: "ideas--:-rise outof the darkness, become animated, start living a life-the life
An aversion to materialism, urbanism, and the rapid pace of modern life stimulated the belief
of art, the life ofbeing;' 72 an idea in apparent conflict with the notion of the artist-genius as a
among Symbolists that primitive life-cultures that preceded or were otherwise removed from
selector who assembles elements from the visible world in a way that the "popular herd" will
historical time-was better than that of the present day. This belief was corroborated by the
find intelligible. Both approaches-the one relying on "concrete phenomena;' the other on "an
presumed perfection of Paradise and the modernist myth that asserted the simple contentedness
archetypal and complex style" -nonetheless call to mind Moreas's Symbolist manifesto. The
ofAfrican and Oceanic natives. 66 Aurier considered Symbolist artists superior by virtue of their
bizarre, biological hybrids ofRedon fulfilled Aurier's notion of the artist as creator, fabricating
retention of an original and unmediated relationship with the universe characteristic of children
and "primitives;' whose demise was an inevitable byproduct of civilization.
from the depths of his imagination. During his early career, Re don preferred black and
white because they most effectively conveyed the fantastic; color, he felt, referred to the natural
Aurier proclaimed: "the strict duty of the ideist painter is to make a reasoned selection from
In his journal To Oneself (1922) Redon claimed: "My whole originality therefore consists
the multiple elements of objective reality;' 67 an oddly conservative strategy rooted in academic
•·'''·''''"-""u.•~ the most implausible beings live human lives according to the laws of the plausible,
practice that Naturalist artists rejected as a deceptive vision of the world. In a further effort to
the logic of the visible, insofar as it is possible, at the service of the invisible."73 Redon
assign Symbolism a rational character, Aurier compared Gauguin favorably to a mathematician
a conceptual process similar to Rodin's by combining elements from disparate sources.
and a "scientific genius:' Aurier's conservative values contrasted with those ofMoreas and Ver-
~harcoal drawing Cactus Man (Fig. 13), he produced a hybrid humanoid growing from a
haeren, who asserted the primacy of dreams and irrational forces. Aurier's disdain for "the
His conflation of animal and vegetable recalls the earlier works of Jean Grandville
popular herd" betrays an elitist attitude confirmed by his assertion that "only the genius knows
Fig. 14) and may be indebted to the displays ofAfricans and Oceanic natives at the
how to read" everyday objects as signs of transcendent ideas. As a result, only geniuses could
·~,.uL""'·"-LJLvu in Paris.74 The hair-thorns and despondent expression ofRedon's figure
escape the limitations of a superficial, ri1atel"ialistic existence.
evoking Symbolist conceptions of the suffering artist. This hypothesis
Genius came with a price: artist-geniuses risked ridicule, misunderstanding, and even rejec-
LR.pron:ed by Emile Bernard's evaluation of Redon as an unjustly maligned artist: "Loving
tion, a situation confirmed by the research of the forensic anthropologist Cesare Lombroso.
misunderstood and rejected due to a lack of public comprehension of his works, he
Lombroso claimed: "And the fact, now unquestioned, that certain great men of genius have
developed and realized that total expansion of himself only by which an artist can
been insane, permits us to presume the existence of a lesser degree of psychosis in other men of
31
BEGINNINGS
The planter displays a low-relief scene depicting a woman standing and holding a pole with
leaning toward a man and grabbing his elbow with her right hand. The man,
appear to be stumps severed at the knee, lurches sideways and reaches toward
his free right hand. Does this scene represent a moment from the life of the man
i1l the planter? Although the woman appears to be attacking the man, the murky
"''°'"~'o"'"~'" it impossible to judge whether Redon represented a familiar story.76 The artist
his intention: Redon suggested but did not state. Odd juxtapositions combine
multidirectional strokes and unfinished contours to distinguish the
the natural world. Redon's use of charcoal, a medium considered appropriate only
studies, indicates a subversive technique as well as subject matter.
that an artist's creative powers were divine, arrogant though it might seem,
<'~''·'""-'u'·" of support in contemporary scientific findings. The research of the Russian
in the 1870s suggested that animals draw logical conclusions about experitheir behavior accordingly.77 Pavlov's findings required the formulation of
iaJ:ordiJffe1L·e11LtiaLtir1gl1rncnan int(cllc:crfrc>m anirnal th011ghrprocesses. Many investigathat the decisive criterion was creativity rather than a capacity for rational
13 Odilon Redon, Cactus Man, 1881, various charcoals with stumping, wiping, erasing, incising,
and sponge work, on light brown wove paper, 49 x
2009
32.2
cm. Woodner Collections. Image ©
Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
long been assumed. According to this hypothesis, because the greatest act of
been the creation of the world, the artist who drew on his imagination to
took full advantage of human potential. As Gauguin explained in an
33
BEGINNINGS
August 14, 1888, letter to Emile Schuffenecker: "think more about the act of creation than
about the rest; it is' the only way to ascend to God while imitating our divine master in the
process of creation." 78
This paradigm of imitating the process rather than the appearance of nature was crucial for
some Symbolist artists. August Strindberg (1849-1912) advised in his November 1894 essay
"New Directions in Art! Or the Role of Chance in Artistic Creation": "Imitate nature in an
appropriate way, imitate in particular nature's way of creatingl" 79 Strindberg did this in plays,
short stories, paintings, and experimental photographs. Among the latter were Strindberg's
"celestographs": images fixed on photographic plates exposed to the night sky without the
intermediary of a lens or camera. They reflect a similarly nonconformist pursuit of scientific
experimentation as a means of original creation (Fig. 15). To make them, Strindberg poured salt
solutions onto glass plates, allowed the solutions to crystallize, and printed them on photographic paper, a process motivated by a conviction that Strindberg shared with Wyzewa: "every
molecule contains the handwriting of the universe." To Strindberg, the serendipitous assemblage
of mineral salts into landscapelike compositions confirmed creativity's source in unconscious
processes that corresponded to divine creativity. His disregard for conventional imagery and
artistic processes affirmed his freedom from authority and validated his individualism. These
values harmonized with political anarchism, which envisioned an egalitarian society of happy,
healthy individuals that functioned in a collaborative and altruistic manner, free from the
°
oppression of central governments. 8 For Symbolists, the divine gifts of insight and invention
were a blessing and a curse. In an 1899 biography, The "Christ" of Carriere, Charles Morice
compared the painter Eugene Carriere (1849-1906)-ignored, condemned, and finally
respected-to Christ, 81 who had been described in similar terms by the French archaeologist
Ernest Renan in his pioneering work of biblical archaeology, Life ofJesus ( 1863).
Gauguin's Agony in the Garden (Fig. 16) represented the artist as a selfless savior ofhumanity.82 Gauguin depicted Christ in his final days of psychological and physical anguish, using
his own visage for Christ's, evidenced by the prominent nose and sturdy physique. Here Christ
"wa.i.ts. betrayal by Judas, who accompanies the Roman soldiers in the background. Christ's
bright cap of red hair and the coarsely woven brushstrokes in nonnatural colors signal to the
viewer that Gauguin's purpose was not simple description. In a November 1889 letter to Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890 ), Gauguin confided, "This canvas is fated to be misunderstood,
so I shall keep it for a long time." 83 In an interview published in L'Echo de Paris in 1891, he
u..,,,..,,,u"uthe painting as a visualization of a feeling: "The crushing of an ideal, and a pain that
both divine and human:' 84 Agony in the Garden might equally be an illustration of the Pasor a display of raw emotion. Gauguin conflated past and present, sacred
profane, in representing himself as Christ. His dual sense of isolation and mission was
of Symbolist artists, who depicted Saint Anthony-the hermit saint tortured by
15
August Strindberg, Celestogmph, 1894. Strindberg Museum, Stockholm.
demons-almost as frequently as the suffering Christ. In a materialistic world in
art no longer served church and state, artists risked marginalization and commoditizaAttributing to themselves the divine power of genius-through which they could
35
BEGINNINGS
BEGINNINGS
Symbolist art. That Symbolist art expressed ideas and was "subjective" would not have been
contested. But the proposition that Symbolism should be "synthetic" and therefore generally
comprehensible was not shared by reclusive Symbolists concerned primarily with exploring
their own imaginations or expressing metaphysical concepts-in other words, artists whose
"ideas rise out of the darkness." Aurier's support of Synthetism as an appropriate technique or
medium of expression resulted from his desire to promote artists like Gauguin who belonged
to the "concrete" camp of Symbolism.
To Aurier, art that was ideist, symbolist, synthetist, and subjective was intrinsically decorative-a concept quite different from the pejorative connotation with which that term is now
burdened. Duringthe late nineteenth century, however, "decorative" was opposed to "imitative;'
and indicated reliance on imagination rather than sense perception. The British poet and playwright Oscar Wilde observed that "art begins with abstract decoration with purely imaginative
and pleasurable work dealingwith what is unreal and non-existent." 86 Gauguin included flowers
in the background of Spirit ofthe Dead TVatching to satisfy his "decorative sense." Decoration
resulted when an artist-genius was guided by his aesthetic instinct. Despite its modem elements,
Symbolism's roots were embedded in earlier aesthetic and philosophical currents, as we shall
see in the next chapter.
~yn1bolism arose first in. Paris as the city was. undergoing unprecedented demographic and
physical changes during the second half of the nineteenth century. Throughout Europe, a
16 Paul Gauguin, Agony in the Garden, I889, oil on canvas, 72-4 x 9I.4 cm. Norton Museum of Art,
West Palm Beach, Florida, Gift ofElizabeth C. Norton (46.5).
combination of demographic, economic, and political circumstances reduced the individual
to the cash value of his labor. Writers were the first to lament the condition of Western society,
and Moreas's manifesto on Symbolism coincided with a surge of Symbolist art and literature,
enlighten and perhaps even save humanity-not only defined a social role for artists but ele-
which often idealized temporally or physically remote cultures. Although no single definition
vated them to the status of spiritual leaders.
lHLJv1.corn
In an 1 s91 Mercure de France article, Aurier set forth the parameters of Symbolist art:
advocated turning inward, to the worlds of dream and imagination; thought and
Ideist, since its unique ideal is the expression of the idea;
,.
Symbolist, since it expresses the idea by means of forms;
Synthetic, since it writes out those forms, these signs, according to a mode susceptible to general
comprehension;
Subjective, since the object depicted is not considered as an object, but as a sign of an idea perceived
by the subject [viewer];
And consequently decorative-insofar as decorative painting ... is only a manifestation of an art
that is simultaneously subjective, synthetic, syillb;list, and id~ist:ss
Aurier's summary was both authoritative and influential; it has been the basis for discussions
of Symbolist art ever since its publication. His description of Symbolism as ''ideist" -intended
to convey an idea (rather than imitate nature)-articulated the most fundamental principle of
emerged, artists and intellectuals distinguished it from Naturalism, whose preoc-
·•"~uu.i;.cv.v" "''-'-'-LLO"'"·'-over action. Symbolists accorded privileged (genius) status to individu-
to penetrate appearances in order to reveal underlying, eternal truths, the recognition
essential to humanity's salvation. The special powers of such individuals endowed
with a creative ability comparable to the Creator's. Because their contemporaries often
appreciate the efforts of such geniuses, they often envisioned themselves as martyrs,
Christ figures.
37
Notes
Shortened citations are usedfor works listed in the Select Bibliography. Whenever possible, published reprints
and translations oforiginal texts are cited in order to facilitate the reader's access to the sources.
INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS SYMBOLIST ART?
r. "Lost Paradise" was organized by the Montreal Museum ofFine Arts in l 995; "Kingdom of the Soul"
was shown at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, and Prins
Eugens Waldemarsudde in Stockholm ih 2000.
2. Jullian, "The Esthetics of Symbolism in French and Belgian Arr:' in Balakian, ed., The Symbolist
l'Vlovement in the Literature o_(European Languages, 529. He added: "Symbolism is a network of allegorical
representation that is either personal or shared by a very small number of minds:' When he wrote this
article in 1982,Jullian was reacting against the dominance of formalism.
3. Hofstatter, "Symbolism in Germany and Europe:· in Erhardt and Reynolds, eds., Kingdom of the
Soul 17.
4. In Symbolist Art (51 ), Edward Lucie-Smith notes that despite recent interest in Symbolist art, scholars
have tended to misunderstand its development. The new approach to the plastic arts that emerged in the
second half of the nineteenth century is often associated with the Symbolist movement, which was essentially a literary phenomenon. The literary Symbolists, when they achieved an independent identity by
bringing together preexisting ideas, looked about for artists who seemed to echo and to justify their own
program in another field of creative activity. Hungarian art historian Lajos Nemeth correctly asserted that
"it would be a mistake to define Symbolist painting in terms of Symbolist literature:' although he too
proposed classifying it according to subject matter ("Contribution to a Typology of Symbolist Painting:'
in Balakian, ed., Symbolist lY!ovement in Literature, 438).
5. Heller ("The Art Work as Symbol") cites Robert Goldwater and Margaretha Rossholm as the other
scholars who, at the time (1984), distinguished Symbolism by style.
6. Rapetti, Symbolism, 145-46. For the connection between Symbolism and abstract art, see also
Cheetham, The Rhetoric ofPurity; Reynolds, Symbolist Aesthetics and Early Abstract Art; and Weisberger,
ed., TheSpiritual in Art.
7. For a discussion ofMeier-Graefe's championing oflmpressionism, see Patricia G. Berman, "The
Invention of History: Julius Meier-Graefe, German Modernism, and the Genealogy of Genius:' in
Foster-Hahn, Imagining lYfodern German Culture, 91-105. See also Robert Jensen's chapter "Der Fall
. Meier-Graefe" in his lYfarketing l'Vfodernisrn in Fin-de-Sif:cle Europe (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1996).
209
210
NOTES TO PAGES -2-IO
NOTES TO PAGES ll-16
8. See Alice Goldfarb Marquis, Art Cztlr: The Rise tlnd Ftll! of'Clement Greenbe1K (Boston: Museum
of Fine Arts, 2006).
9. Goldwater, Primitivism in Afodenz Art, 18.
rick Camiller (Chicago: I. R. Dee, 2002); and David Jordan, Tmnsfarming Ptlris: The Life Llnd LLlbors of
Bm·on Htlussmtlrm (New York: Free Press, 1995).
9· Ferdinand Ti.innies is considered the father of German sociology. See Arthur J\1itzman, "Tonnies
ro. Rapetti, 5_ymbolism, 53-
II. Although some artists are commonly referred to as Symbolists (indeed, some were committed to
creating Symbolist works throughout their careers), it is more appropriate ro write about Symbolist works,
since many artists went through a Symbolist phase or produced one or more works that conformed to
Symbolist criteria but generally pursued other styles and approaches.
and German Society, 18 8 7-1914: From Cultural Pessimism to Celebration of the Volkgemeinschttji, "journtll
ofthe Histor_y ojldetls, October 1971, 507-2+
IO. For a discussion of the relationship between Symbolism and politics, see Herbert, The Artist ,znd
Socitll Reform; and chapter 3, "Anarchy;' in West, Fin de Siecle, 33-49.
II. See \Villiam D. Irvine, Ihe Boultlnger Affair Reconsidered: Ro_yLllism, Boultlngism, tlnd the Origins
12. For a discussion of this anthropological concept, see Clifford Geertz, The Interprettltion ofCultures
(New York: Basic Books, 1973), 3-3r.
13. For a history of art academies, see Niklaus Pevsner, Actldemies ofArt, Ptlst tlnd Present (New York:
Da Capo Press, 1973). For a more specific discussion of the nineteenth century, see Rafael Cordozo Denis
of the RLldictll Right in Fmnce (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); and Martin P. Johnson, The
Dreyji;s Affizir: Honour Llnd Politics in the Belle Epoque (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 199 9 ).
12. Rene Ghil, "Notre Ecole;' LLl Derndence, October 1, 1886, excerpted in Michaud, Afesstlge poetique
du Symbo!isme, 77+
and Colin Trodd, eds., Art mzd the Amdemy in the Nineteenth Century (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
13. Michaud, lVfesstlge poetique du Symbolisme, 744.
University Press, 2000 ), and for France in particular, see Albert Boime, Ihe Awderr~y Llnd French Ptlinting
14. Arnold Bi.icklin painted a similar image, VerittlS (1881, Neue Pinakothek, Munich), that Klimt may
in the Nineteenth Centur_y (London: Phaidon, 1971).
have known. It represents a woman holding a sword in one hand and drawing back a long veil with the
14. As Patricia Mathews notes (Aurier's 5_ymbolist Art Criticism tlnd Iheory, 2), "the one factor that
must now be put into perspective in the attempt to define a general Symbolist aesthetic is its diversity."
15. The lectures of Saussure (1857-1913) in Paris (1880-91) and Zurich (1891-1913) expressed ideas
consonant with Symbolism, but his principles of structural linguistics became widely known only afi:er
the posthumous publication of his Cours de linguistique genemle, ed. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye
(Paris and Lausanne: Payor, 1916).
other to display her nude body. The word "veritas" (Latin for "truth") is inscribed beside her.
15. Schiller,Xenien und Votivttlji:ln, "Wahl:' I am indebted to JiirgenJiipner for help with this translation. Klimt could as well have quoted William Shakespeare: "To thine own selfbe true, and it must follow
as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." Hmnlet 1:3.
16. Heller, "Artwork as Symbol;' 13.
17. According to Philippe Jullian, Eve "represented the happiness of the senses before the idea of sin."
16. In literature, this rejection of formulas was manifested in free verse, which first emerged in the
poetry of Gustave Kahn (1859-1936). Cornell, Ihe Symbolist 1\foi,ement, n3.
q .. Miklos Szabolcsi, "On.the Spread of Symbolism:' in Balakian, ed.,
the
Litemture ofEuropmn Ltlngutlges, 184.
"The Esthetics of Symbolism in French and Belgian An;' quoted in Balakian, The Symbolist }vfovement in
the Litemture ofEuropetln LLlnlfJ<11ges, 540.
.
18. See Lisa Ann Norris, "The Early \Vritings of Camille Mauclai~: Toward an Understanding of
Wagnerism and French Art 1885-1900;' in Morton and Schmunk, eds., The Arts Entwined.
19. Schopenhauer, "The Metaphysics of Music;' in The TVorld tlS TVill tlnd Representtltion, 3:232.
CHAPTER I: BEGINNINGS
r. Jean Moreas, "Le Symbolisme:' Le Figtlro, September 18, 1886, I50; see Dorra, Symbolist Art Iheories,
151-52.Jean Mon~as was the pen name ofloannes Papadiamantopoulos, a native of the Greek Peloponnese,
also known as Morea. Literary scholars ofi:en consider the deaths of poets Paul Verlaine (1896) and Stephane Mallarme (1898) as marking the end of the Symbolist era.
2. Michaud's ]',fesstlge poetique du Symbolisme ( 713-809) presents excerpts of some of the most important Symboiist writings.
3. Excerpted in ibid., 764.
20. Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) praised Delacroix's "orchestration of colors" in a letter to his
brother, Theo. The Complete Letters oj'Vincent vtln Gogh, 2:535.
2r. Dorra, 5_ymbolist Art Theories, 62.
22. See chapter 5, "Speed;' in Kern, The Culture of Time tlnd Sptlce, I09-30.
23. Kern, The Culture of Time and Sptlce, 69, n5, 21+ See also Ithiel de Sola Pool, The Socitll Jmpm't of
the Telephone (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977 ).
24. Redon referred to the Impressionists as "parasites of the object." Chasse, Le lvfouvement symboliste
dtlns Zart du X!Xe siecle, 49.
25. The color theories ofisaac Newton ("New Theory About Light and Colours;' 1675 letter to the
4. Moreas, "Le Symbolisme;' in Dorra, Symbolist Art Iheories, 15r. James Kearns sorts out the complexities
Royal SocietyofLondon),Johann Wolfgangvon Goethe (Theory ofColors, 18IO ), Hermann von Helmholtz
of contemporary cultural criticism and the states associated with various ideological positions in his chapter
(Htlndbook oj'Physiologictll Optics, 1856), Ogden Rood (ivfodern Chromtltics, 1879), and Charles Blanc
"The Literature and Music of Painting in Symbolist Art Criticism;' in his Symbolist Ltlndsctlpes, 53-86.
(The Gmmmtlr ofthe Arts o_f'Design, 1867) were familiar to most artists in the second halfofthe nineteenth
century.
5. Moreas, "Le Svmbolisme;' in Dorra,
Iheories, 152.
6. Ibid. Fran~ois Villon (1431-afi:er r463) was an outlaw and poet renowned for his heartfelt ballads.
Fran~ois Rabelais (c. 1494-1553) was a monk, physician, and writer best remembered for his ribald novels
recounting the adventures of Gargantua and Pantagruel. Rutebeuf (c. 1245-1285) was a satirical playwright
and social critic.
7. The censuses of 1861and1872 found that only about a third of Parisians had been born in. P,tris, and
the percentage declined over the course of the century. Jeanne Gaillard, Ptlris, !11 ville, r!?_p-rS70:
26. Dorra, Symbolist Art Iheories, I5I.
27. Ibid., 62.
28. Cogniat and Gauguin, Ptlul Gtluguin, IS4S-I903; see also ibid., 16 and 62. In a March 1899 letter
to Andre Fontainas, Gauguin wrote, "Here, near my hut, in total silence, I dream of violent harmonies
aihid the natural perfumes that intoxicate me." Dorra, Symbolist Art Iheories, 209.
29. Bernard, A Emile Berntlrd, 215.
L'Urbtlnisme ptlrisien al'heure d'Htlussmtlnn (Paris: Editions Champion, 19 77)' 19 5, IO l - I I. See also David
30. The first kind of dream-which relates to the life of the dreamer-can also be fantastic and even
H. Pickney, Ntzpoleon III 1md the Rebuilding ofFm nee (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958), esp.
destructive, as evidenced by Nikolai Gogol's I835 short story "Nevsky Prospect;' in which the protagonists-
chapter 7' "The City Grows;' 151-73.
8. See Michel Carmona, Htlussnltlnn: His Life tlnd Times, 1md the A1Llking oflV!odern Ptzris, trans.
Pishkarev the artist and Pirogov the military officer-transform the world (symbolized by the fashionable
shopping street Nevsky Prospect) into an imaginative space in which the disparity between their visions
211
212
NOTES TO PAGES
NOTES TO PAGES I 6-2 2
22-30
and realitv lures them both into self-destructive behavior. Ironically, Gogol himself, seduced by the rant-
corners of the imagination. Here, a demonic horse-generally interpreted as a symbol of masculine potency
ings of th~ religious fanatic Father Konstantinovskii, burned his final writings before starving himself to
and violence-observes an unusual scene in which a sinister incubus crouches on the woman's abdomen
death. See Berman, All That Is Solid kielts into Air, 195-206. Dreams play a central role in the poetry of
(in a posture reminiscent ofHodler's Night).
Baudelaire; see, for example "Reve parisien:' in his Fleurs du mal.
31. Redon declared: "My drawings inspire and do not define themselves. They define nothing. They
"horse-ride" position in sexual intercourse. With the woman on top, her ejaculatory fluids could enter the
place us, in a manner similar to music, in the ambiguous world of indeterminacy" A Soi-menze, 26-27
penis, thereby effeminizing her male partner. See Clive Hart and Kay Gilliland Stevenson, Heaven and
(author's translation). For a discussion of dream research in the late nineteenth century and its impact
the Flesh: Imagery ofDesirefrom the Renaissance to the Rococo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
on Redon, see Larson, "The Unconscious Mind and the Dream:' chap. 6 of her Dark Side of Nature,
1995), 32. I am indebted to Guy Tal for this reference.
133-56.
32. The anthropomorphic character ofRedon's spider recalls th~ story of Arachne from Ovid's Meta-
Dupin (a seamstress with whom he had a relationship from 1884 until at least 1887 and with whom he
morphoses and Franz Kafka's 1915 variation on this myth in The kietamorphosis.
33. ~oted in Larson, The Dark Side ofNature, 143 (emphasis in original).
34 . Other important early studies include LudwigStriimpell, The Nature and Origin ojDreams (1874);
Johannes Volkelt, The Dream Imagination (1875);AlfredMaury,SleepandDreams (1878); and W. Robert,
45. In his medical treatise, Avicenna (980-1037 C.E.) described the physical consequences of the
46. Sharon Hirsh brought to my attention the fact that Hodler's painting depicts both Augustine
remained close friends until her death in 1909) and his wife, Berta Stucki, whom Hodler married in 1881
and divorced in l89r.
4 7. Noted in Hirsh, Hodler's Symbolist Themes, 30. Peladan included Night in the inaugural exhibition
of the Salon Rose+ Croix held in Paris in 1892.
The Dream Explained as a Necessity ofNature (1886). The most thorough history of dream research is
48. Night was subsequently shown at the Venice Biennale in 1899 and at the Exposition Universelle
Stefan Goldman's Via regia zum Unbewu~ten: Freud und die Traumforschungim rg.jahrhundert (Gie~en:
in Paris in 1900. The following year Night was purchased by the Bern Kunstmuseum, indicating that its
Psychosozial-Verlag, 2003). In English, Henri F. Ellenberger's History ofthe Unconscious (New York: Basic
status as a subversive painting had changed, at least in Switzerland's capital.
Books, 1981) is a good source for the history of dream studies.
35. See Radestock, Schlaf und Traum, chap. l: 'Die Wichtigkeit des Schlafes; die Bedeutung des
J,faurice Denis, rS70-I943 (exh. cat., Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, 1994), 2r.
Traumes und der ihm verwandten Zustande in individueller und VO!ker-Psychologie sowie in der politischen Geschichte" (The Importance of Sleep; the Meaning of Dreams and the Related Condition in
Individuals and Folk Psychology as well as in Political History), l-36. Radestock also discusses the influence of Swedenborg on dream theory. Ibid., ro.
3.6. Gobineau's conclusion was affirmed.by Cesare Lombroso in his chapter on the influence of race
and heredity on genius and insanity in L'uomo di genio (The Man
ofGenius), first translated into French
(asL'Hommedegeni) in 1889.
37. The ancient sources of these ideas are discussed in the chapter "The Noble Savage in Antiquity;' in
Lovejoy and Boas, Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity, 287-367.
38. Seances were a common means of attempting to contact the realm of the dead, beginning in the
49. ~oted in Cogeval, "The Heavens Cannot Wait: Maurice Denis and the Symbolist Culture:' in
50. Jeffrey Howe discusses the theme of melancholy in Munch's paintings in "Nocturnes: The Music
of Melancholy, and the Mysteries of Love and Death:' in his Edvard Munch, 48-74.
5r. Patricia G. Berman discusses this subject in "Edvard Munch's Modern Life of the Soul:' in McShine,
EdvardJ,iunch, 38.
52. Heller, "Tne Art Work as Symbol," 158-59.
53. Tojner, Munch in His Own vVords, 94.
54. See Prelinger and Parke-Taylor, The Symbolist Prints ofEdvard Munch, 192-95.
55. I am indebted to Jane Glaubinger for this information.
56. By 1676, The Anatomy ojivielancholy had gone through eight editions. Its significance as a source
is attested by the fact that Project Gutenberg has made the entire text available on the Internet.
mid-nineteenth century. See John Monroe, "Makingthe Seance 'Serious': 'Tables Tournantes' and Second
57. See Klibansky, Panofsky, and Sax!, Saturn and J,felancholy, as well as Stanley W. Jackson, Melan-
ofReligions, February 1999, 219-46. The popularization
cholia and Depression: From Hippocratic 'Times to Modern 'Times (New Haven: Yale University Press, l 9 86),
of occultist practices in England is discussed by Roger Luckhurst in his article "W. T. Stead's Occult
78-103; Laurinda S. Dixon, Perilous Chasti~y: Women and Illness in Pre-Enlightenment Art and Medicine
Economies:' in Henson, Culture and Science in the Nineteenth-Century Media, 125-35.
39. The extent of Gauguin's command of the Tahitian language, in which he sometimes tided his
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, r995), 197-207; and Juliana Schiesari, The Gendering ofJvfelancholia:
Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Symbolics ofLoss in Renaissance Literature (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni-
paintings, has been the subject of debate. Bengt Danielsson claimed that Gauguin's knowledge ofTahitian
versity Press, 1992).
Empire Bourgeois Culture, 1853-1861;' Histm:y
was cursory ("Gauguin's Tahitian Tides:' Burlington Magazine, April 1967, 228-33), a judgment that has
only recently been disputed. See Elizabeth Childs, "Gauguin's Dialects:' in Berman and Utley, A Fine
Regard.
40. Gauguin, Noa Noa, 33. Noa Noa first appeared in the Symbolist journal La Revue blanche in
October 1897, three years afi:er Spirit ofthe Dead W'atching was first exhibited in Paris at the DurandRuel Gallery.
4r. Eisenman, Gauguin's Skirt, 121.
42. "However strangely the dream may employ it, it can never actually get free from the real world."
Freud, The Interpretation ofDreams, 12.
43. Alexander Diickers discusses Night in "Der Symbolismus Ferdinand Hodlers:' inFerdinandHodler
(Nationalgalerie Berlin), 239-4r.
44. See Alain Corbin's chapter "Intimate Relations" in Perrot, A History of Private Life,
58. See Elsen, The Gates ofHell. The theme of eternal damnation also attracted Symbolist poets; Arthur
Rimbaud's collection A Season in Hell appeared in r874.
59. Dorra, Symbolist Art Theories, 202. From Aurier, "Symbolism in Painting: Paul Gauguin;' Mercure
de France, March 1891, 155-64.
60. Artist and social critic Hippolyte Taine, whose English Idealism: A Study
of Carlyle (1864) was
widely read by artists, announced: "Our inferno is no longer, as it was in the days of Cromwell, 'the terror
being found guilty before the Great Judge' [has been replaced by] ... the fearof making bad business deals
or lacking modern conveniences" Ibid., 174 (amhor's translation). Taine's appeal for Symbolists lay partly
"Iii a·shared contempt for modern materialism.
61. Henri Triqueti (1804-1874) used this format of discrete panels in his monumental bronze doors
to the Madeleine church in Paris (1834-41), a work that Rodin certainly knew and with which he may
have consciously been competing.
When Henrich Fuseli (1741-1825) painted The Nightmare (1781, Detroit Institute of Arts), dreams
62. See Elsen, Rodin's Thinker.
considered incidents of madness. In reifyinga woman's disturbingly erotic dream, Fuseli explored the
63. Gsell, Rodin on Art, 74-
213
214
NOTES TO PAGES
30-35
6+ Michaud, Afessage poetique du Symbolisme, 742.
65. Dorra, !)_ymbolist Art Theories, 20r. Aurier was clearly influenced by Schopenhauer, who asserted:
NOTES TO PAGES
82. See WladyslawaJaworska, '"Christ in the Garden of Olive-Trees; by Gauguin. The Sacred or the
Profane?" Artibus et Historiae, 199 8, 77- IO 2.
83. Q::_oted in Brettel, The Art ofPaul Gauguin, 162.
84. Cited in ibid., 16r.
"The comprehended Idea ... is the true and only source of every work of art. In its powerful originality,
it is only derived from life itself, from nature, from the world, and that only by the true genius, or by him
whose momentary inspiration reaches the point of genius:' Arthur Schopenhauer, "The Platonic Idea:
The Object of An;' in The World as Will and Representation, 1:304.
66. See James Clifford, "Histories of the Tribal and the Modern;' in Kymberly Pinder, ed., Race-ing
Art Histor_y: Critical Readings in Race andArt History (New York: Routledge, 2002), 217-32.
67. Dorra, Symbolist Art Theories, 20 o.
35-43
85. Dorra, Symbolist Art Theories, 200-20i.
86. Pierrot, The Decadent Imagination, 23.
CHAPTER 2: PRECURSORS
68. Lombroso, The Afan ofGenius, vii. Baudelaire, E.T. A. Ho/finann, Edgar Allen Poe, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, Arthur Schopenhauer, Robert Schumann, and Jonatha~ Swifi: are among the "insane geniuses"
that Lombroso discusses. Lombroso took a particular interest in deviance. He published several studies
r. The population of Europe doubled between 1800 and 1900, even though tens of millions emigrated
or fell victim to war and disease. Most countries in western and northern Europe instituted compulsory
education (and literacy) during this period.
on genius, including Genius and Insanity (1864) and Genius and Degeneration (1897 ).
69. Lombroso, The Afan ofGenius, vi. The current of anti-Semitism in Symbolist thought is discussed
2. The classic study of Romanticism is M. H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (New York: W.W. Norton, 19 7 3).
further in chapter 3.
70. Poe, Nouvelles histories extraordinaires, xvi (author's translation; emphasis in original). Schopen-
3· The invention of the Gothic novel as a literary genre is generally credited to Horace Walpole, whose
Castle ofOtranto: A Gothic Tale was published in 1764.
hauer earlier expressed a similar idea: "The genius, then, always participates to some degree in the characteristics of the saint:' "Genius and Virtue;' in Essays fom the Parega and Paralipomena, 78.
4- E.T. A. Hoffmann, The Devil's Elixir, 2. Hoffmann ( 1776-1822) was a lav.'Yer, composer, and writer.
His story"The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" (1816) inspired the Nutcracker ballet (1891 - 92 ), adapted
by Alexandre Dumas and set to music by Piotr Tchaikovsky.
5. Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, 158.
7r. Pe!adan, L:4rt idealiste et mystique, 17. Similarly, the French painter Alphonse Osbert (1857-1939)
wrote in April 18 9 9: "I regard art as a religion of beauty and the conjurerof the elevated and serene thoughts
open to mankind's intelligence faced with the splendors of nature. [T]he painter must not give a servile
translation of nature [but must J free his work of that which is unnecessary and debilitating to the initial
emotion. Art only lives by harmonies. It must be the conjurer of the mystery, a solitary response in life, like
prayer.in silence:' Letter to Felicien-Fagus, quoted in Pincus-Witten, OccukSymbolism in France; no:
72. Dorra, Symbolist Art Theories, 202.
Ibid., 56.
74. See Larson, The Dark Side oJNature, 158-61, for a discussion of the relationship between Grandville
73-
andRedon.
75. Bernard,AEmileBernard, 136.
76. Larson (The Dark Side of Nature, 82) suggests that the scene represents the attack of the
Amazons.
77. Pavlov first presented his findings in 1903 at the Fourteenth International Medical Congress in
Madrid in a paper titled "Experimental Psychology and Psychopathology in Animals." Reprinted in
Essential H0rks ofPavlov, ed. Michael Kaplan (New York: Bantam, 1966), 60-75.
78. Victor Merlhes, ed. Correspondance de Paul Gauguin (Paris: Fondation Singer-Polignac, 1984),
no. 159·
79. Reprinted from the original Revue des revues (Paris) article in Hedstrom, Strindberg, 182. For
Strindberg and the creative process, see Harry G. Carlson, Out ofInferno: Strindberg's Reawakening as an
Artist (Seattle: University ofWashington Press, 1996).
80. These ideas were articulated by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in his 1840 essay "What Is Property?"
(1840) and elaborated by Petr Kropotkin in his 1892 book, The Conquest ofBread (1892), both of whom
influenced progressive political thought in the late nineteenth century.
8r. Emile Bernard described Vincent van Gogh in similar terms in a January 1889 letter to Albert
Aurier: "Moved by the most profound mysticism ... my dear friend has come to believe himself a Christ, ,_.
a God. His life of suffering and of martyrdom seems to me such.as to make of this astonishing intellect a .
being of the beyond." Q::_oted in Rewald, Post-Impressionism, 367. This is confirmed by van Gogh's 1885
painting The Bible (Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam), where he paints a Bible open to Isaiah chapters 52
and 53, with the clearly legible verse: "He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted .
with grief." Noted in Lovgren, The Genesis ojlvfodernism, 131.
6. See especially the chapter "Swedenborgism and the Romanticists" in Balakian, The Symbolist Jvfovement, 12-28.
7· Very little serious scholarly attention has been paid to Swedenborg's scientific innovations, but John
R. Swanton, "Emanuel Swedenborg," ScientificAfonth(y, February 1938, 132- 4 0, undertakes an overview
of his contributions.
8. Swedenborg, Heaven and Its H0nders and Hell, 56.
9. See Lynn R. Wilkinson, The Dream of an Absolute Language: Emanuel Swedenborg and French
Literary Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 199 6).
IO. See Martin Bidney, "A Russian Symbolist View ofWillian1 Blake" Comparative Literature, Autumn
1987, 327-39. The Russian Symbolist poet Konstantin Bal'mont (1867-1942) translated Blake's poetry
and included a chapter titled "The Forefather of Contemporary Symbolists: William Blake, 1757- 182]''
in his 1904 bookAfozmtain Summits ( Gornyja Vershiny ).
II. Noted in Lucie-Smith, Symbolist Art, 75. Francine-Claire Legrand (Le Symbolismeen Belgique, 15 6)
observed that the Belgian sculptor George Minne (1866-1941) was familiar with Blake.
LL See Mark Schorer, "Swedenborg and Blake;' Modern Philology, November 193 8, 157 _ 7 8.
13. Baudelaire, "Le Peintre de la vie moderne;' in Artificial Paradises, trans. P. Roseberry, 6 90.
14. In his joyful hedonism, Blake differed from Swedenborg, who advocated det~chment from
physicality.
15. The Complete Poetry and Prose ofWilliam Blake, ed. David Erdman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 490.
16. For a discussion of Baudelaire's discovery of Poe, and Poe's influence, see W. T. Brady, "New Light
on Baudelaire and Poe;' Yale French Studies (1952): 65-69.
17. "Le Corbeau" was published in Mallarme's 1893 collection Vers et prose: Mon:eauxchosis. The collection also included his poem "The Tomb of Edgar Poe" ("Le Tombeau d'Edgar Poe").
18. Redon published six lithographs based on Poe stories in 1882 with the title To Edgar Poe. Pierrot
(The Decadent Imagination, 27-33) discusses the impact of Poe on artists and writers.
.
19. Poe, TVorks 1, pt. 4 (1905), 29.
20.
2!.
Ibid., pt. 3, 154·
Ibid., 15 6.