Art Lovers discussion

Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts...symbolism of art is related to the gothic component of Romanticism...

Symbolism was largely a reaction against naturalism and realism, anti-idealistic styles which were attempts to represent reality in its gritty particularity, and to elevate the humble and the ordinary over the ideal. Symbolism was a reaction in favour of spirituality, the imagination, and dreams.

The Symbolist Manifesto
Symbolists believed that art should represent absolute truths that could only be described indirectly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolis...

French Symbolist painters

Edmond Aman-Jean
Gaston Bussière
Eugène Carrière
Maurice Chabas
Charles Filiger
Charles Guilloux
Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer
Edgar Maxence
Gustave Moreau
Alphonse Osbert
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
Odilon Redon
Ary Renan
Alexandre Séon

I was going to try to post some examples of paintings by a few of the above Symbolist painters, but I can't read ANY French and wouldn't know which word was the name of the painting! Anyone want to give it a shot?

Evening, 1895
Charles Victor Guilloux (French, 1866–1946)
Oil on canvas
h: 16.9 x w: 21 in / h: 42.9 x w: 53.3 cm

Is that actually Symbolist? Artnet has it under "French and Barbizon School Landscapes."

La fuite, 1910 (The Flight, or The Escape)
Odilon Redon (French, 1840–1916)
Oil on canvas
h: 66 x w: 51 cm / h: 26 x w: 20.1 in

I like Redon, but mostly his weird stuff.

I wonder if that inspired Louise Bourgeois.

Lobstergirl wrote: "I wonder if that inspired Louise Bourgeois."

That's exactly what I thought, Lobstergirl!

It also looks like a Maurice Sendak face.

I know we covered this movement many years ago, but I just happened to be reading about Edvard Munch and how initially he was spurred by the art world who said his work was “Impressionism carried to the extreme” and “a travesty of art”.
Interestingly, the art critics penned his art this way before he actually met the Impressionists. (As the article made it seem due to the chronology of the content)

He moved to Paris and was drawn to the Impressionists because he appreciated their use of color and ambiguous descriptions of the world around them though they differed a lot from his own art.

He broke from them to form what was to later to be called Symbolism. His works were of real life but made in a ‘dreamy’ sort of way, as if seen through a veil.
Of course, he isn’t listed as one of the Symbolist artists because his art didn’t stay in that movement. But I just wanted to add this little tidbit of information that I found interesting. I’m not even sure if I put it in the right place. But why not here rather than anywhere else?

Again I am not home, I’m out of town and not near a PC so I can’t copy and paste so I’m going a bit by memory of what I read.

I don’t have any article to cite, it’s just what I’ve picked up.

A little about our friend Edvard Munch.