19th century Symbolist and Decadent Art / Anat Moberman, Ph.D ענת מוברמן

The term “Symbolism”, which came to define a European cultural phenomenan of the last quarter of the nineteenth centery, first appeared in Jean Moréas’ (French Poet, 1856-1910) manifest on Symbolist Poetry, published on the 18th September 1886 in the literary supplement of the newspaper Le Figaro . In the manifest, which discussed Symbolist poetry, but it is quite relevant to the visurl arts as well, Moréas criticized the realistic cruelty documentation of the Naturalistic literature and poetry and called to take a new approach that emphasizes the emotional value projected from the work while objects are functioning only as icons.

This fenomenan, which Moréas’ called “Symbolism”, was characterised by reacting to the 19th century European Positivist cultural perceptions of admiriring the modern industrial reality and seeing in science and the objective reality the formula to describe the world around us. In contrast to the positivist objectiv point of view,  the Symbolists, who couldn’t adjust themselves to the modern actual reality, searched for a refuge , a safe place that allows them to avoid dealing with this “cruel” world.  Hence, they found a comfort in the concept that the true reality is not the one experienced by the senses, but instead it is a supreme, beyond the external objective world reality, and that only ideas can introduce that reality. Symbolism was actually an escapist movement  that believed in alternative, suprerm, imaginary and delusional reality which is a substitute to the testable world ; Reality of ideas, impressions and emotions presented by actual, real-world, objectsfunctioning as icons only.

  The search of the Symbolist artists and poets after a pure and sublime alternative reality made the Symbolists turned to the imagination, the fantasy and the dream, to non-western cultures and to Nature.  Most of the Symbolist’s painting were characterized with melancholic atmospheres of sorrow and boredom, disillusionment of Love, fatigue and loneliness. These melancholic states of mind came to express the artists’ inability to deal with the actual reality.

            It’s crucial to emphasize that Symbolism wasn’t a style but rather a conceptual approach, promoting the concept of presenting an abstract idea of a higher reality over the reality of everyday life. Therefore, there is no unified stylistic approach, but many styles that are designed to express the same idea. Visual descriptions are not understandable by themselves, but they are subjected to an interpretation that refers to the existence of a higher truth assisted by philosophical, religious, literary and social themes.

 Descriptions of Nature, or Nature consisting figures, were a common motif in creating an heavenly, alternative world,  a pure reality, but it had also a long tradition in western art. In order that Nature will be considered Symbolic, one that  presents a supreme and higher reality, it was stylized, abstracted and even became decorativ (as seen in Marice Denis’ paintings). This is a still (even frozen), lacking of drama landscapes, without a breath of wind or movement, sometimes having Heavingly features such as a full shining daylight of spring time consisting classic figures, and other times Nature becomes “Poeteic”, meaning it transfers melancolic sentiments by shadows and ligths , as the italian painter, Giovnanni (Nino) Costa,  wrote:

“Dawn, or the hour that follows sunset, so quiet and poetic in its shadows, in the uncertainty of the descriptions of life. Those restrained and mysterious effects, which have an affinity with the calm of the soul and with the sweet melancholy that at certain hours infuses with nature.”

 Even though Symbolism was an artistic expression of Escapism, the Italian Painter Pellizza da Volpedo created a unique individual Symbolism which contained the two opposites attitudes –  Positivism and Symbolism, and gained the term “Positivist Symbolism” (Meaning, what the European Symbolism was running away off, the Positivist realistic point of view, he contained in his work of art). Pellizza, who lived in an unstable, economically and politically, period in Italy, saw his duty, as an artist, to create an “Art for the Humanity” which will give hope for the common people for a better, egalitarian, society. His painting “The Mirror of life, and what the first does, the others also do” (1898) presents this “Positivist Symbolism” idea. The painting presents a sheep’s line walking slowly in mountain scenery of Volpedo’s village at twilight time, which corresponds to Costa’s call to describe the “Poetic” moment of Nature. But the painting’s title , that was inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy, Purgatorio, canto III indicates that this is not just a Symbolist painting of Poetic Nature but it also carries the artist’s social perception. In Dante’s Divine Comedy, the key to resolve the painting mystey, the Purgatory is defined as an intermediate stage between Heaven and Hell, in which resides the souls of the people born before the coming of Christ, from the pagan world.

The Purgatory is characterized by an activity of rise and not of fall like in Hell. Hell has a gravity pulling down (in a direction of decline and deterioration), whereas the Purgatory has a kind of rising up movement where the souls can move on and up to the next terrace. Accordingly, Pellizza’s sheep’s line suggests  “A kind of spiritual calmness, joining the soul to the great calm before skipping between good and evil among the joys and pains of life.” Pellizza’s choice to use the Divisionism,  a modern technique it its time, expresses his socialist values, as noted in a letter he wrote in 1895: “modern art should, besides being an harmony of color and balance, rise to the concept of human … I feel that now it is no longer a period of creating ‘art for art’s sake’ but ‘Art for the Humanity’. Thus, the formal reduction generated by using the Divisionist technique that creates an interpretation of the reality instead of describing it, the quiet rhythmic sheep’s walk and the light illuminate their profile like an halo, all of that transform the scene from a mere naturalistic description of sheep walking around the meadow, to a suggestive Symbolist description aiming to transfer in the wave line march the humanity progress forward to a better future, not in a straight line, but in an undulating motion, “skipping between good and evil” .

While Symbolism acted as an escapist, melancholic cultural movement, a new attitude up streamed the world of Art, which was considered part of the Symbolist movemet– Decadentism (most of the Decadent artists were also active as Symbolists as well)

               Like the Symbolists, the Decadents also went against the naturalistic positivist philosophy, and looked for ways to escape from it, from the boredom and banality of daily life.[13] But the difference between the two is noticeable in their attitude to Escapism: whereas the Symbolists sought for a new, supreme, sometimes illusionist reality, the Decadents founds their way to deal with the objective reality by devoting themselves completely to the pleasures of the body, usually those who conspired with sexual perversion, ignoring any sense  of morality and / or guilt (Wilde. “Doriane Gray Picture”). Most of the Decadent artist dealt with the image of the seductive, temptress, pervert and destructive Woman, called Fémme-Fâtale. Often, in order to present her closeness to nature and her being a savage Naturalist creature she was described as a young redheaded, beautiful woman, mostly naked, in nature, sometimes accompanied by savage animals.