Symbolism: Fin de Si

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• Symbolism Fin de Siècle Europe
• Flight from modernity, Primitivist critique of
  European culture, reaction against 19th century
  mechanistic Positivism the dominant faith in
  science and technology.
• Objective realism" is rejected for the
  representation of personal symbols, memory,
  imagination, and dreams to evoke a sympathetic
  understanding of the artist's Idea in the
  viewer as music does.
• "Art has gone through a long period of
  aberration caused by physics, chemistry,
  mechanics, and the study of nature....Artists,
  having lost all their savagery, went astray on
  every path."
• Gauguin

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Symbolism and Decadence Subjective
vision CORRESPONDENCES (a literal translation
from the French) Charles Baudelaire,
1857 Nature is a temple whose living columns
sometimes allow confused words to escape man
passes through these forests of symbols, Which
regard him with familiar looks. As diffuse echoes
from afar mingle in a shadowy and profound
unison as vast as the darkness and the
light, scents, colors and sounds commune. Here
are some perfumes fresh as infants' skin, sweet
as the oboe's song and green as the prairies -
while others, corrupt, rich and triumphant, have
the expansiveness of infinite things, the
ambergris, musk, benzoin, and incense, that chant
the ecstasies of the spirit and the
senses. Charles Baudelaire's Theory of
Correspondences in which objects become signs for
the artist's personal ideas and feelings includes
the idea of "Synesthesia" in which the 5 senses
yield equivalent and concomitant responses, so
that a line can be "noble" or "false (Gauguin),
a shade of yellow, "sour" and clanging
(Kandinsky).
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Paul Gauguin, Mallarmé (Nevermore), lithograph
for publication in artists little magazine,1891
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Paul Gauguin, Where Do We Come From? What Are We?
Where Are We Going? Oil on burlap, 139 375 cm,
18971898Symbolism and Primitivism
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Studio of the North in Pont Aven,
1888Cloissonism and JaponismPost-Impressionist
(Symbolist) linear, flat patterning, subjective
rather than objective vision, no visible light
source
Gauguin, Vision After the Sermon Jacob
Wrestling with the Angel, 1888 (Pont Aven)
Emile Bernard, Breton Women in a Green Meadow,
1888 (Pont Aven)
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(left) Paul Sérusier, Talisman, 1888, oil on
cigar box lidNabis, Pont Aven School of
Gauguin (Studio of the North)(right)
Sérusier, Portrait of Paul Ranson Dressed as a
Prophet (Nabi)1890, oil on canvas, 60 x 45 cm
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Maurice Denis (French Nabis and Symbolist
painter, 18701943), Muses in the Sacred Wood,
oil on canvas, 1893

• Remember that a picture, before being a battle
  horse, a nude, an anecdote or whatnot, is
  essentially a flat surface covered with colors
  assembled in a certain order.
• Maurice Denis, Definition of Neo-Traditionalism
  , 1890

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James Ensor (Belgian Symbolist, 1860-1949), Self
Portrait with Masks, 1899
. . . and my suffering, scandalized, insolent,
cruel, malicious masks. . . I have joyfully shut
myself in the solitary milieu ruled by the mask
with a face of violence and brilliance.
James Ensor
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James Ensor, Entry of Christ into Brussels in
1889, 1888, 99 x 169, oil on canvas, The
GettyCompare Dostoyevsky's The Grand Inquisitor
from The Brothers Karamazov
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Ensor, detail of Entry of Christ into Brussels in
1889
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James Ensor, The Intrigue, 1890, oil on
canvasCompare Francisco Goya (Spanish,
1746-1828), The Witches Sabbath (detail) 1820-23,
fresco transferred to canvas
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Odilon Redon (French Symbolist painter and
graphic artist (1840-1916), The Eye Balloon,
charcoal, 1878 (right) Redon, The Smiling
Spider, 1881, charcoal, 49.5 x 39 cm
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Redon, Silence, 1911, oil on paper

• My sole aim To instill in the spectator, by
  means of quite unexpected allurements, all the
  evocations and fascinations of the unknown on the
  boundaries of thought.
• Redon

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Edvard Munch (Norwegian Symbolist-Expressionist
1863-1944)Self Portrait with Cigarette, 1895,
oil on canvas,110.5 x 85.5 cm
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Edvard Munch, The Vampire, oil on canvas, 1893
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Munch, Puberty, 1895, oil on canvas, 60 x 43
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Munch, The Dance of Life, 1899-1900, oil on
canvas, 49 1/2 x 75, National Gallery, Oslo
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• Munch, The Lonely Ones, woodcut, 1894, and
  painting, 1935

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Munch, The Scream, 1893, Casein/waxed crayon and
tempera on paper (cardboard), 35 7/8 x 29,
National Gallery, Oslo(Left) Munch, The Scream,
1893, woodcut
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• This version of The Scream was stolen from the
  Norwegian National Gallery in 1994.

August, 2004 thieves escaping with another
version of The Scream from the Munch museum in
Norway. Recovered August, 2006 with minor damage.
Two paintings are valued at 15 million dollars.
Madonna, 1894-95
Recovery CBS news
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Gustave Klimt (Austrian Symbolist, 1862-1918)
Music I, 1895Oil on canvas, 37 x 44.5 cm
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Klimt, Idyll, 1884, Oil on canvas, 49.5 x 73.5
cmVienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum
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Klimt, Love, 1895, Oil on canvas, 60 x 44 cm,
Vienna Art Historical Museum
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Klimt, Pallas Athene, 1898, Oil on canvas, 75 x
75 cm
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Joseph Maria Olbrich, (Austrian,
1867-1908)Vienna Secession building, 1898,
Jugendstijl
Above the entrance To every age its art and to
art its freedom
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Vienna Secession Building, Jugendstijl details of
front
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Klimt, Beethoven Frieze The Hostile Powers,
1902, Casein paint on stucco, 220 x 635 cm,
Vienna Secession building, lower floor
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Klimt, Beethoven Frieze Praise to Joy, the
God-descended, 1902Casein paint on stucco, 220 x
470 cm
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Klimt, Death Life, 1916