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Symbolist Movement
Examples of Symbolist
paintings (click to
enlarge)
Gustave Moreau
and
Odilon Redon
were the greatest
painters of the
Symbolist movement. The
movement was an artistic
uprising opposed to
Naturalism, Realism and
Impressionism. Moreau
stated "Without
free will, art remains
bound by the chains
imposed by the clergy.
Imagination must be
permitted to take wing
and fly as the stout
pigeon in the park
flutters in the garden
of magnificence and
finally lunacy."
Jean Moreas's Symbolist Manifesto, published in Le Figaro in 1886, stated that realism was obsolete and declared that symbolism was the model to be treasured hence forth. The basic philosophy of this aesthetic movement was a belief that the passing tangible world is not true reality, but a reflection of the unseen Absolute. Odilon Redon asserted "My drawings inspire and are not to be defined. They determine nothing. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous world of the undetermined. They are a kind of metaphor." The writings of Edgar Allan Poe, and Joris Karl Huysmans, and the Gothic and Romanticism style were major influences. Painters based their imagery on magical, sacred and occasionally mythological themes.
Symbolist Writers: Joris-Karl Huysmans, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, T. S. Eliot, Renée Vivien, William Blake, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Albert Samain, Rémy de Gourmont
A List of the Greatest Symbolist Painters
Man Ray American 1890-1976
Odilon Redon (1840-1916)
Edvard Munch Norwegian, 1863-1944
Gustave Moreau French 1826-1898
William Blake British, 1757-1827
Key Descriptive Words and Phrases associated with Symbolist Painting - emotional effects, emotional experience, avant-garde, nineteenth-century, Les Fleurs du mal, Charles Baudelaire, Edgar Allan Poe, psychological depths, symbolic colors, exaggerated imagery, human psyche, exaggeration, primitivism, transparent colors, self-expression, expression intensity, psychological, symbolic themes, universal subject matter, industrial modern age, individual genius, sense of otherness, otherworldly
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