Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgianorigin
in poetry and other arts. Symbolism in painting took its direction from
the poets and literary theorists of the movement, but it also represented a
reaction against the objectivist aims of Realism and the increasingly
influential movement of Impressionism. In contrast to the
relatively concrete representation these movements sought, Symbolist painters
favoured works based on fantasy and the imagination. Moreover, Symbolism can be seen as a revival of
some mystical tendencies in the Romantic tradition, and was close to the
self-consciously morbid and private decadent movement.
Paul Gauguin “Riders on the Beach”, (1902)
The symbolist painters used mythological and dream
imagery. The symbols used by
symbolism are not the familiar emblems of mainstream iconography but
intensely personal, private, obscure and ambiguous references. More a
philosophy than an actual style of art, symbolism in painting influenced the
contemporary Art Nouveau style and Les Nabis.
Such
Postimpressionist painters as Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh as well as
the Nabis may be regarded as Symbolists in certain aspects of their art.
However, the painters who are truly representative of Symbolist aesthetic
ideals include four principal figures: GustaveMoreau, Odilon Redon, Viktor Vasnetsov, and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes.
The term "symbolism" is derived from the word "symbol" which derives from the Latin symbolum, a symbol of faith, and symbolus, a sign of recognition, in turn from classical Greek συμβόλον symbolon, an object cut in half constituting a sign of recognition when the carriers were able to reassemble the two halves. In ancient Greece, the symbolon, was a shard of pottery which was inscribed and then broken into two pieces which were given to the ambassadors from two allied city states as a record of the alliance.
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