We explain what symbolism in art is, its historical context and other characteristics. Also, its main representatives.
What is symbolism?
In art history, symbolism It was an artistic and literary movement of the European 19th century emerged in France and Belgium. He is considered one of the most important of his time.
It is a movement that responds to the realism prevailing in Europe at that time. He proposed an escape into the dreamlike, rescuing delirium and experimentation with psychotropics, in an artistic posture reminiscent of the romanticism of the English poet William Blake (1757-1827).
In his literary manifesto of 1886, the Greek poet Jean Moréas (1856-1910) defined symbolism as “…the enemy of teaching, declamation, false sensibility and objective description.” That is to say, they aspired to find the hidden correspondences between the objects of the sensible world. were looking for an alien, mysterious, dark reality.
Within the history of the movement, Its starting point was the publication of The flowers of evil by Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867). The dark aesthetics of this French poet, together with that of the sinister stories of the North American Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), were decisive in founding the symbolist aesthetics.
However, it was not until 1870 that the Frenchmen Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898) and Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) defined and developed Symbolist aesthetics. Ten years later there was an entire generation strongly attached to the movement, not only in Belgium and France but in many other nations.
For its part, pictorial symbolism emerged as a response to naturalism and impressionism. He initially opted for a certain degree of abstraction in his paintings, and then for the “recovery” of the meaning of art, which was assumed lost among so much rationality.
As in Romanticism, Symbolist painting opted for color, and in its imagery it is common to find religious or mystical concepts, if not scenes from popular and traditional stories.
Historical context of symbolism
Prior to the emergence of symbolism, realism and naturalism understood art as a way of imitating reality political and social of nations. Furthermore, they praised the representation of everyday reality. So, symbolism emerged as opposition to those movements and is included among other post-romantic movements.
In that sense, symbolism is close to Parnassianism, but it emerged as a division among its ranks after the arrival of the “cursed poets”: Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Tristan Corbière, Isidore Ducasse, among others, to mid-19th century.
The symbolists oppose the philosophical and artistic tradition founded by the French Enlightenment. Nor do they accept the scientific, cosmopolitan and rationalist worldview that the latter proposed, as well as against the pragmatic and materialist values of the nascent industrial society.
Characteristics of symbolism
The Symbolist movement was characterized by:
- Its aesthetics are interested in the dreamlike, the spiritual and the fantastic exalting subjectivity over objectivity.
- They shamelessly portrayed diabolical situations sexual and drug use.
- In the pictorial, he opted for color and a certain margin of abstraction to create your own set of pictorial shapes.
- In the literary, opposed rationality of realism and also to the perfection of Parnassian verse.
- Each artist went in his own way, because although symbolism had general tendencies, He was not at all strict in his procedures or methods.
- He was a precursor of modernism and decadentism.
Main authors of symbolism
The main symbolist writers were:
- Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) The cursed poet par excellence, the Frenchman Charles Baudelaire and his collection of poems The flowers of evil (1840) marked an important change in the sensibilities of the time, giving rise to the emergence of symbolism and establishing him as one of the great European poets of all time. His odes to prostitutes, syphilis and liquor, as well as his bohemian and licentious life, are famous, and he is considered the first author to condense the experience of the metropolitan city of the time in the word “modernity.”
- Isidore Ducasse (1846-1870) Known as the Count of Lautréamont, he was a Franco-Uruguayan poet considered not only a symbolist and decadentist, but a precursor of surrealism. He led a short life and lacked his deserved recognition as a poet, and his main and most famous work is The songs of Maldoror (1869).
- Stephane Mallarmé (1842-1898) One of the poets who best represented the symbolist aesthetic, and who at the same time led to its improvement. Predecessor of the 20th century avant-garde, he is the author of a short and ambitious work that inspired later poets such as Rainer María Rilke and Paul Valéry. He is credited with incorporating free verse and poetry around a central symbol, typical of the movement and its successors.
- Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) One of the most precocious French poets in history, he developed his entire work before the age of 19, the age at which he abandoned letters and dedicated himself to traveling through Africa and Europe. On one of these trips he would die at the age of 37; some claim that he was involved in the slave trade. A lover of Verlaine, his work was not recognized during his lifetime, but it influenced future literature in a fundamental way, especially his collections of poems. A season in hell (1879) and The illuminations (1886).
- Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) Central French poet in the Symbolist movement, he lived a fleeting life marked both by poetry and by his love affair with Rimbaud, whom he wounded with a pistol in the wrist in 1873, and was sentenced to two years in prison. His fame in the literary world coincided, during his lifetime, with the deepest of socioeconomic miseries, and he died prematurely at 51 years of age. Elected in 1894 as “Prince of Poets”, his work includes prose and poetry, and he stands out in it Yesterday and today of 1884.
- Paul Valery (1871-1945), French writer, poet, essayist and philosopher, was not only a symbolist, but his work embodies the so-called “pure poetry” of the interwar period of the 20th century. From an extensive critical and poetic work, in which Monsieur Teste (1896) and The marine cemetery (1920), is a fundamental poet, widely commented on by Theodor Adorno, Octavio Paz and Jacques Derrida.
For their part, the main symbolist painters were:
- Gustave Moreau (1826-1898) French painter considered a true precursor of symbolism, he is known for his decadent aesthetics, strongly influenced by Italian Renaissance art and by romanticism itself. His works pursue the Greco-Roman imagination, and among them stand out Oedipus and the sphinx (1864) and Jupiter and Semele (1890).
- Odilon Redon (1840-1916) Also French, he is considered a precursor of surrealist painting. His work included painting, sculpture, engravings and lithographs. He was largely unknown until a cult novel written by Joris-Karl Huysmans and published in 1884 mentioned his work and made it popular. An admirer of Poe, Darwin and his friend Baudelaire, whose books he often illustrated, he produced mostly black and white works, unlike the other Symbolists.
- Jean-Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940) French painter and illustrator who was part of the group of young artists called the “Nabis.” Influenced by Gauguin, he painted mostly interior spaces, as can be seen in Interior (1902) or in The elegant lady at the Moulin Rouge (1908).
Symbolism and Parnassianism
Symbolism is a division of Parnassianism who refused to follow his precious aesthetic, opting instead for a more hermetic and dark one.
However, The poetry of both movements presents common elements such as the use of word games, the musicality of the verses and the commitment to “art for art's sake”, that is, the idea that art should not be a means of expression of anything other than itself.
The definitive separation between both styles occurred when Rimbaud and other poets decided to publish a series of verses mocking the Parnassian style and its main authors.
References
- “Symbolism” on Wikipedia.
- “Symbolism. 1880-1910” in HA! History of Art.
- “Symbolism” on Hisour.com.
- “Symbolism” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (United States).
- “Symbolism (Literary and artistic movement)” in The Encyclopaedia Britannica.