The Symbolist Period and Its Aesthetic

Source: MoMA, No. 17 (Winter, 1980-1981), p. 2

Published by: Museum of Modern Art
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--
Oclilon Reclon's char coal dIravving The Eye Like a Strange Ballon Mounts toward Infinity, 1882.
The Symbolist Period
and its Aesthetic
Sachs Galleries, 3rd floor
Through March 10
Symbolism as a movement flourished in Europe
during the last two decades of the nineteenthcentury,
first in French prose and verse, and soon thereafterin
the visual arts as well. Symbolism in painting derived
its inspirationfrom the work of such poets as
Baudelaire,Verlaine,Rimbaud, and Mallarm&;their
verse, ratherthan being empiricaland anecdotal, was
highly charged with emotion. A central principleof
Symbolism-"suggest, neverdescribe"-was adopted
by those French painterswho sought to use their
individualemotions as a vehicle to express a more
general human truth. Their main focus was "the idea,"
which was to be expressed via the entire work of art
and not through the specific subject matter.The
Symbolists used the image plus line and color to
express their feelings, and subject matterwas
important only as a means to generalizeemotion. "The
flight into the subjective,the analysis of the self, and
the probing of the mind influencedtheir choice of
subjects,"states Magdalena Dabrowski, Assistant
Curator in the Department of Drawings and the
director of the exhibition. "The main preoccupations
expressive of the Symbolist desire to reach the higher
spiritualplane centered on such themes as unrequited
love, isolation, jealousy, ideas about destiny, death,
and the artist'sinner self and his position in society."
The birth of Symbolism correspondedto a reaction
against the industrializationand materialismthat
dominated so much of the latter half of nineteenth-
century life. It expressed the yearning of many for a
renewedsense of the spiritual,the mysterious.
Originatingin France, Symbolism in its myriadforms
was soon manifest throughout Europe-from Vienna
to Barcelonato Glasgow -and found expression in all
of the arts of that time: music, literature,painting,
sculpture,and architecture.The ideas embodied in the
paintings of Redon, Gauguin, or Munch have counter-
parts in the literatureof Maeterlinck,Ibsen, Bjornson,
and Strindbergand in the music of Debussy, Schon-
berg, Mussorgsky,and Stravinsky.
TIlE SYMBOLIST AESTHETIC, an exhibition of some 90
works, includes drawings, prints, paintings, sculptures,
and examples of the decorative arts from that period.
It delineates the variety and complexity of the Sym-
This content downloaded from 144.82.108.120 on Thu, 31 Dec 2015 02:47:14 UTC
bolist movement and its relation to modernism.
The first public formulation of the principlesof
Symbolism came in 1886with the publication by Jean
Moreas in Le Figaro of the "Manifesto of Symbolism."
In that document the basic tenets of literarySym-
bolism were outlined. These ideas coincided with those
already evolving.among the Symbolist artists. Symbol-
ism in painting "embraceda number of diverse trends
and individual efforts that had in common the will to
transcendthe phenomenal world through the spir-
itual,"states Magdalena Dabrowski. "It represented
the search for a new form and new content based on
emotion. Pictorial manifestationsof Symbolism
cannot be identified with a single unified style. They
include the synthetism of Gauguin and his Pont Aven
followers, the work of the Nabis, and the pointillism of
Seurat."
The Symbolists' emphasis on line and color led to a
greaterattention to surfaceelements, resultingin an
emphasis on decorative quality and on ornamental
line. Because Symbolism became an international
movement, affinitiescan be found in the work of such
diverse artists as Vuillardand Klimt, "wherethe
profusion of decorative patterndissolves the subject of
the painting, creatingan abstractsurface mosaic,"
Dabrowski explains. The growth of the ornamental
style associated with the movement extended increas-
ingly to the decorative and applied arts and to
architecture.
The Symbolist ideas wereTepresentedin England by
the Pre-Raphaelites,in Vienna by the Sezessionists,
and in Belgium by Les XX. "Knownas Art Nouveau in
France, Belgium, and Britain,Jugendstilin Germany,
and Sezession in Austria, it affected the taste in
decoration, book illustration,and typographyfor a
long time after the turn of the century,"Dabrowski
continues. "Symbolism, Art Nouveau, and Jugendstil
together can be considered to have provided the
foundations of such modern 20th-centurymovements
as Fauvism, Expressionism, Futurism, Surrealism,and
Abstract Art,"she adds.
In its attempts to representthe inner states of
emotion through composition and synthesizedform,
Symbolism "resultedin art that demanded the viewer's
participation.It requiredthe spectator to relive the
emotions experienced by the artist,"and in this way
anticipatedcertain ideas relatedto abstractart, accord-
ing to Dabrowski. THE SYMBOLIST AESTHETIC estab-
lishes the link between the Symbolist movement and
modernism. Among the artists representedin the exhi-
bition are Delville, Denis, Ensor, Gauguin, Hodler,
Klimt,Khnopff, Munch,Redon, Seurat,and Vuillard. LI
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Recent Drawings
Acquisitions to Go on View
in March
Sachs Galleries,3rdfloor
March 19-June 2
During the last year works on paper by numerous
artists, including early modern masters,established
contemporaryfigures, and little-known younger
artists, were aquired through purchaseor donation by
the Museum's Department of Drawings. These acquisi-
tions, made during the first year of John Elderfield's
tenure as Director of the Department of Drawings, fill
historicalgaps in the collection or complement existing
works. A selection of these, to go on view in the Sachs
Gallerieson March 19, range from works executed in
traditional drawing media to those that employ
modern technical innovations.
The earliest acquistion to be exhibited will be the
outstanding Le Mercurede Pigalle (ca. 1890)by Paul
Cezanne, the first pencil drawing by this artist to enter
the Department'scollection-joining eight previously
acquired C&zannewatercolors. Among the most recent
are oil stick, craypas, handmade paper, and pastel
works by James Biederman, Lois Lane, Kikuo Saito,
and Joyce Weinstein,respectively,all of which were
completed in 1980.
Newly acquired works by early modernistsinclude
those by Louis Corinth, Carlo Carra(the first of this
artist'swork to enter the Drawings collection), Natalia
Gontcharova, and Henri Matisse. School of Paris
works by Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger, Albert
Gleizes, and Robert and Sonia Delaunay will also be
represented,as will works by artists associated with
Dada and the Surrealistmovements:collages by Kurt
Schwitters, and drawingsand gouaches by Matta,
Francis Picabia, Man Ray, and Yves Tanguy. A set of
major American works will also be on view, including
three Joseph Cornell collages, an exquisite Arthur
Dove in watercolorand silverleaf, Charles Demuth's
Female Acrobats of 1916(joining the Male Acrobats of
1919already in the collection), and a 1926Erika Klein.
A particularlyimportant part of the exhibition will
be a set of majordrawingsby Jackson Pollock that
ranges in date from the late 1930sto the early 1950s.
When added to the Pollock works already in the
Department of Drawings'collection, these give The
Museum of Modern Art a majorand truly comprehen-
sive representationof Pollock's work on paper.
Finally, drawingsby living artists will also be
exhibited, including those by such establishedfigures
as Carl Andre, Michael Heizer, Alex Katz, and Robert
Rauschenberg,as well as by artists who will be
representedin the collection for the first time, among
them Stanley Boxer, Peter de Francia, Richard Haas,
Kenneth Martin, and Myron Stout. LZ
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Among the recent drawingsacquisitions are (top) Paul
Cezanne'sMercuryafterPigalle(le Mercurede Pigalle),ca.
1890, and (bottom) Joseph Cornell'suntitled collage from the
1930s.