Symbolism Paintings

Evoking a taste similar to the Romanticist tradition, but utilized mysticism and sensitivity through mythology and dream imagery, preceding the psychoanalytical work of Freud and Jung.  With a strong philosophical touch, more so than a style of art, and Art Nouveau and Expressionist artists such as Edvard Munch.  Beginning in France as a reaction to the movements of Naturalism and Realism, which seemed to capture the particular components of consensual reality, and presented spirituality and imagination reflecting some artists budding interest in religion and spirituality.

In literature, poet Charles Baudelaire was developing his work and the movement, and especially with such luminaries as Verlaine contributing to the collective effort of the literary movement during the 1860s and through to the 1870s.  With the works of Edgar Allen Poe coming to popularity in the 1880s, the Symbolism movement in artwork represented an outgrowth into the darker and more gothic nature of Romanticism, and contrasted with Romanticism’s rebellious and impetuous sides.  Symbolist writers wrote in very metaphoric and suggestive manner, to imbue the subjects with a sense of symbolic meaning, and made realistic images into representatives for more esoteric and primordial ideas.

In translating the language of dreams into artwork with symbolic leanings, discovering a visual style that draws upon that philosophical approach that captures a sense of art that has been influential on more than one movement artistically, and has evoked some of the more fantastic imagery to ever cross a canvas.  The Symbolist Manifesto was published in 1886, leading to a description of the movement that included ideas such as being hostile towards plain and matter-of-fact meanings, and to express the ideal in a perceptible form was the sole purpose of this art form.

Symbolists that preferred poetic means of conveying their ideas, were known for their techniques of removing technical aspects to achieve a greater fluidity for their work, and became related with seeking use of symbolic images over raw description to evoke the state of the poet’s soul.  Paul Verlaine was influential in an 1884 publication defining the essence of Symbolism, through many essays on the relevant poets of the day, and came to the conclusion of relating the works of this movement to the famed philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, whose own work delved into art as a means of refuge from the strife of the world.

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