Symbolist Art

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Symbolist Art Edward Lucie-Smith 185 plates 24 in color In the public mind, the art of the second half of the nineteenth century is essentially the art of the Impressionists. They, and they alone, are accorded a revolutionary role. It is they, so we are told, who were the opponents of academic painting and the progenitors of Modernism as we now know it. In fact, this is an over-simplification. There was another art, equally revolutionary - and in somé respects even more revolutionary - in its aims: the art of the Symbolist movement. Symbolist artists (notably Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, and Puvis de Cfravannes) tried to apply to painting and sculpture the doctrines and the ideas which alsó inspired poets such as Rimbáud and Mallarmé, and novelists such as Huysmans. Though the Symbolist heyday in Paris was short-lived, the movement had an influence upon painting which perhaps exceeded that of Impressionism both in duratión and geographical rangé. We find important Symbolist... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Symbolist Art Edward Lucie-Smith 185 plates 24 in color In the public mind, the art of the second half of the nineteenth century is essentially the art of the Impressionists. They, and they alone, are accorded a revolutionary role. It is they, so we are told, who were the opponents of academic painting and the progenitors of Modernism as we now know it. In fact, this is an over-simplification. There was another art, equally revolutionary - and in somé respects even more revolutionary - in its aims: the art of the Symbolist movement. Symbolist artists (notably Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, and Puvis de Cfravannes) tried to apply to painting and sculpture the doctrines and the ideas which alsó inspired poets such as Rimbáud and Mallarmé, and novelists such as Huysmans. Though the Symbolist heyday in Paris was short-lived, the movement had an influence upon painting which perhaps exceeded that of Impressionism both in duratión and geographical rangé. We find important Symbolist painters at work in places as remote from one another as Oslo (Munch), Vienna (Klimt), and Barcelona (the young Picasso). It is through Symbolism, too, that we can explain the relationship between the English painting of the fin de siécfe and what was taking place in Europe. Edward Lucie-Smith, in his new study, throws a flood of light upon the origins of Modernism, and upon the development of painting and sculpture in the closing years of the nineteenth century. ". . . an exqeltent book, providing both a good introduction to Symbolist art and a useful corrective to narrow art-historicism" - Konstantin Bazarov, Art and Artists "A crash course in insight, most ably carried out". - John Russell, The Sunday Times of London Edward Lucie-Smith is a poet and prolific journalist and broadcaster. He is the author of La te Modern: The Visual Arts Since 1945 and Eroticism in Western Art (both in the World of Art series). Vissza