Symbolism According to Stokstad, Symbolism is an intellectual movement in late-nineteenth-century art and literature. Symbolism seeks a deeper and more mysterious reality than the one we encounter in everyday life. Symbolism originated in France but had a profound impact in the art of other European countries, where it often merged with expressionist tendencies. Artists transformed appearances in order to give pictorial form to psychic experiences, and they often compared their works to dreams.

Symbolism Historically Symbolism is understood as a response to the increasingly materialistic and mechanized life of the burgeoning Industrial Age and to the empirical, naturalistic art that was uncritically reflected this development. For example, Neoclassicism was a reaction to what was perceived as the excessive decadence of Rococo. Romanticism in turn can be understood as a revolt against the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment (think of David’s Portrait of Antoine-Laurent and Marie-Anne Lavoisier (1788) and a reaction to the scientific rationalization of nature. Impressionism was an attempt to repudiate the Academy’s conservative juries controlled who was accepted into the Salons; the academic standard favored slick technique, mildly idealized subject matter, and content that offered engaging, anecdotal storylines (remember the 1874 Salons des Refusés). Impressionists wanted to liberate their work from being dependent on content and focus instead on depicting the quality of light and air at a specific moment in time (the Haystacks don’t matter, the season and time of day matters).

Gustave Moreau Oedipus and the Sphinx 1864 oil on canvas, 206 x 105 cm

Henri Rousseau The Sleeping Gypsy 1897 oil on canvas, 1.3 x 2.03 cm

Edvard Munch Vampire 1895

Gustave Klimt The Three Ages of Woman 1905

Symbolism The visual “nationalism” of Impressionist art was countered by the Symbolists with an emphasis on spirituality and an acceptance of the mysteries of existence. Gauguin was one of the first.

Paul Gauguin Gauguin sought “…an attitude toward design in which expressive need took precedence over natural fact. Eventually [Gauguin’s] search led him to conclude that the sources of art lie deep within human consciousness and that painting should return to its original purpose, the examination of the ‘interior life of human beings’” (Hamilton, 85).

Paul Gauguin Portrait of Vincent Van Gogh 1888

Paul Gauguin Night Café at Arles (Madame Ginoux) 1888

Paul Gauguin The Yellow Christ 1889 Gauguin was outspoken in his advocacy of representing sensations and emotions solely through abstraction, through line, form, and color. What is happening in this image?

Paul Gauguin Self Portrait 1889

Paul Gauguin La Belle Angele 1889

Paul Gauguin La Orana Maria (Hail Mary) 1891 Gauguin’s compositions have a strictly balanced framework of horizontals and verticals to which the harmonious rhythms of the groups of figures remain subject. The sensuous curves of the many bronze-skinned Maori girls he depicted are stylized into flat, unmodelled forms which reflects the “Cloisonnism” developed in Pont-Aven, a style based on the leased contouring between the panes of stained-glass windows, which lends the figures their solidity of outline.

Paul Gauguin The Meal or The Bananas 1891 The influence of Japanese prints is evident in his work.

Paul Gauguin The Nativity 1896 Is he re-inscribing this traditional scene?

Paul Gauguin Two Tahitian Women 1899 Note his use of the “other”— Tahitian women and Brittany peasants. Does his use of Tahitian women as model recall Ingres and Delacroix’s Orientalism?

Paul Gauguin Where do we come from? Where are we going? 1897 Art historians admit that they have absolutely no idea what this image is actually about. If asked, just write that this image is “symbolic” of the nature and journey of life—of both the cyclic nature of life and the emotional journey therein…or some other nonsense. Sometimes, only the artist really understands what he meant… and sometimes the artist had no clear idea himself. He just painted…..

Is Gauguin an Impressionist? What two artists are most closely related to Gauguin--in their expressive use of color and form?