Symbolism

A portrait of the French poet Charles Baudelaire, by Etienne Carjat.

In the arts, the use of symbols to concentrate or intensify meaning, making the work more subjective than objective. In the visual arts, symbols have been used in works throughout the ages to transmit a message or idea, for example, the religious symbolism of ancient Egyptian art, Gothic art, and Renaissance art. Symbolism also refers to the Symbolist movement in art and literature, which flourished between 1885 and 1910. Symbolist painters rejected realism and Impressionism. They felt that art should not simply depict, but should suggest ideas, moods, and psychological states through colour, line, and form. Their subjects were often mythological, mystical, or fantastic. Gustave Moreau was a leading Symbolist painter. Others included Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and Odilon Redon in France, Arnold Böcklin in Switzerland, Edward Burne-Jones in Britain, and Jan Theodoor Toorop in the Netherlands.

Gauguin and his disciples of Pont-Aven give the clearest pictorial interpretation of what was described as an ‘ideational, synthetic, subjective, decorative’ aim. Local colour was emphasized and given an emotional value, and was substituted for the Impressionist use of light. Black outlines stressed the decorative and symbolic character of such a work as Gauguin's Le Christ Jaune.

Originating in France in the 1880s, Symbolism developed after Romanticism and before surrealism in its exploration of the world of imaginative, dreamlike fantasy. Deliberately nonrealistic, many Symbolist painters followed their literary counterparts in using macabre, gruesome, or erotic themes; for example, the Bible story of Salomé, who requested the beheading of John the Baptist, was a favourite subject of artists and writers during this period. Gauguin and his followers used more commonplace imagery such as peasant scenes, inspired with a sense of mystical intensity.

In addition to shared subject matter, Symbolist critics identified formal similarities between the visual, literary, and musical arts; just as the Symbolist poets felt that meaning could be expressed through the sound and rhythm of their verse, so the artists saw colour and form as capable of embodying ideas.

The influence of Symbolist ideas on European art has proved far-reaching, and can be traced in the work of artists such as Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat, James Ensor, Edvard Munch, Gustav Klimt, Ferdinand Hodler, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Vasily Kandinsky.

Symbolism

Late 19th-century movement in French poetry, which inspired a similar trend in French painting. The Symbolist poets used words for their symbolic rather than concrete meaning. Leading exponents were Paul Verlaine, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Arthur Rimbaud.

The poetry and criticism of Charles Baudelaire provided much of the inspiration for the Symbolists poets. On 18 September 1886 Jean Moréas published a Symbolist manifesto in the Paris journal Le Figaro, in which he claimed that it was the function of art ‘to clothe the idea in sensuous form’; a concern with sensuous beauty of form, particularly the musical quality of verse, as well the use of ideal, mythological, or occult imagery, are typical of much Symbolist poetry. The writers were thus reacting against the realistic and naturalistic modes of expression current at the time.

The Symbolist movement as a whole embraced a variety of different art forms, and there was considerable cross-fertilization between poetry, art, and music. Symbolism also found literary expression in the drama of Villiers de l'Isle-Adam and Maurice Maeterlinck, and the novels of J K Huysmans and Eduoard Dujardin. Poets who have been influenced by the Symbolists include Jules Laforgue, Paul Claudel, Paul Valéry, Ezra Pound, T S Eliot, Wallace Stevens, W B Yeats, Stefan George, and Rainer Maria Rilke.