Symbolism: Fin de Siècle Europe Flight from modernity, Primitivist critique of European culture, reaction against 19th century’s dominant faith in science and technology. Objective optical “realism" of Impressionism is rejected for the representation of personal symbols, memory, imagination, and dreams to evoke a sympathetic understanding of the artist's “Idea” in the viewer as music does. "Art has gone through a long period of aberration caused by physics, chemistry, mechanics, and the study of nature....Artists, having lost all their savagery, went astray on every path." Paul Gauguin

Symbolism and Decadence Subjective vision CORRESPONDENCES (a literal translation from the French) Charles Baudelaire, 1857 Nature is a temple whose living columns sometimes allow confused words to escape; man passes through these forests of symbols, Which regard him with familiar looks. Charles Baudelaire's Theory of Correspondences in which objects become signs for the artist's personal ideas and feelings includes the idea of "Synesthesia" in which the 5 senses yield equivalent and concomitant responses, so that a line can be "noble" or "false“ (Gauguin), a shade of yellow, "sour" and clanging (Kandinsky).

Paul Gauguin, Mallarmé (Nevermore), lithograph published in a Symbolist art and literature magazine, 1891

Paul Gauguin, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? Oil on burlap, 139 × 375 cm, 1897–1898 Symbolism and Primitivism

(left) Paul Sérusier, Talisman, 1888, oil on cigar box lid Nabis, Pont Aven “School” of Gauguin (“Studio of the North”) (right) Paul Sérusier, Portrait of Paul Ranson Dressed as a Prophet (Nabi) 1890, oil on canvas, 60 x 45 cm

Maurice Denis (French Nabis and Symbolist painter, 1870–1943), Muses in the Sacred Wood, oil on canvas, 1893 Remember that a picture, before being a battle horse, a nude, an anecdote or whatnot, is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order.” Maurice Denis, Definition of Neo-Traditionalism, 1890

James Ensor (Belgian Symbolist, ), Self Portrait with Masks, and my suffering, scandalized, insolent, cruel, malicious masks... I have joyfully shut myself in the solitary milieu ruled by the mask with a face of violence and brilliance. James Ensor

James Ensor, Entry of Christ into Brussels in 1889, 1888, 99 x 169,” oil on canvas, The Getty Compare Dostoyevsky's The Grand Inquisitor from The Brothers Karamazov

James Ensor, detail of Entry of Christ into Brussels in 1889 Compare with (right) Hieronymus Bosch (Netherlandish c ) Christ Carrying the Cross, ca , oil on wood.

James Ensor, The Intrigue, 1890, oil on canvas Compare: Francisco Goya (Spanish, ), The Witches Sabbath (detail) , fresco transferred to canvas Hieronymus Bosch, Christ Carrying the Cross, ca , oil on wood.

Odilon Redon (French Symbolist painter and graphic artist ( ), The Eye Balloon, charcoal, 1878 (right) Redon, The Smiling Spider, 1881, charcoal, 49.5 x 39 cm “The prince of mysterious dreams” (Huysmans)

Odilon Redon, Silence, 1911, oil on paper / Symbolist My sole aim: To instill in the spectator, by means of quite unexpected allurements, all the evocations and fascinations of the unknown on the boundaries of thought. Odilon Redon

Edvard Munch (Norwegian Symbolist-Expressionist ) Self Portrait with Cigarette, 1895, oil on canvas,110.5 x 85.5 cm. Munch lived off and on in Paris between AUDIOSS/index.htmlhttp:// AUDIOSS/index.html Open link for a short video of the major 2009 “Edvard Munch: Influence, Anxiety, Myth” Chicago Art Institute exhibition

Edvard Munch, The Vampire, oil on canvas, 1893

Munch, Puberty, 1895, oil on canvas, 60 x 43”

Munch, The Dance of Life, , oil on canvas, 49 1/2 x 75,” National Gallery, Oslo from the series, The Frieze of Life, which contained most of Munch’s major paintings

Munch, The Lonely Ones, woodcut, 1894, and painting, 1935

Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893, Casein/waxed crayon and tempera on paper (cardboard), 35 7/8 x 29,“ National Gallery, Oslo (Left) Munch, The Scream, 1893, woodcut “As he walked across a bridge with friends at sunset he was seized with despair and ‘felt a great, infinite scream pass through nature.’”

This version of The Scream was stolen from the Norwegian National Gallery in August, 2004 – thieves escaping with another version of The Scream from the Munch museum in Norway. Recovered August, 2006 with minor damage. The paintings are valued at $15 million dollars. Madonna, Recovery – CBS news

Gustav Klimt (Austrian Symbolist / Secessionist, ) Death & Life, 1916

Klimt, Idyll, 1884, Oil on canvas, 49.5 x 73.5 cm Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum

Klimt, Love, 1895, Oil on canvas, 60 x 44 cm, Vienna Art Historical Museum

Klimt, Pallas Athene, 1898, Oil on canvas, 75 x 75 cm

Joseph Maria Olbrich (Austrian, ) Vienna Secession building, 1898, Jugendstijl (Austrian Art Nouveau) Above the entrance: To every age its art and to art its freedom Gustav Klimt was a founder of the Vienna Secession

Klimt, Beethoven Frieze: The Hostile Powers, 1902, Casein paint on stucco, 220 x 635 cm, Vienna Secession building, lower floor

Klimt, Beethoven Frieze: Praise to Joy, the God-descended, 1902 Casein paint on stucco, 220 x 470 cm

Vienna Secession Building, Jugendstijl details of front. Designs attributed to Koloman Moser (Austrian Painter and Designer, )

Koloman Moser, Bookcase, 1903, made by Caspar Hrazdil, Vienna, Thuya and Lemon Wood, Brass, and Glazed Glass, 57 x 39 x 16 in. (right) Moser, cover design for Ver Sacrum (Rite of Spring), international Jugenstijl magazine of Vienna Secession, published from January 1898 to October 1903

Koloman Moser, Stained glass window for St. Leopold’s Church (Kirche Am Steinhof), , the church of Vienna’s psychiatric hospital, Otto Wagner, architect.

The Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop), an Arts & Crafts Movement, established in 1903, brought together architects, artists and designers committed to design (primarily jewelry, fabrics for clothing, ceramics and pottery, and furniture). (right) the Stoclet Palace, Brussels, Belgium, designed by Josef Hoffmann and built by the Weiner Werkstätte, , This integration of architects, artists, and artisans makes it an example of Gesamtkunstwerk: the first aim of the Vienna Workshop. Wiener Werkstätte logo

Auguste Rodin, Gates of Hell, , with detail (right) Symbolist and Expressionist sometimes associated with Impressionism because of the gestural texture of the relief

Detail of Rodin’s Gates of Hell: Fugit Amor Modernist aesthetics of fragmentation and the issue of “originality” (vs. the copy / reproduction) as a modernist myth

Sculpture exhibition Paris World Fair 1900

(left) Auguste Rodin (French Sculptor, ) in studio with collection of antique sculptures: fragments with Balzac study (right) artist among his “fragments”

Rodin, Detail of Gates of Hell with The Thinker and sources: Michelangelo and Durer Durer, Melancholia, 1515 Night, Michelangelo, 1520–34 Michelangelo, Last Judgment, 1535

Auguste Rodin, Gates of Hell, Three Shades, with tourist photo (center) in Paris and single Shade at the Atlanta High Museum

Constantin Brancusi (Romania, ) (left) Vitellius, 1898 (right) Brancusi in Paris studio, 1933 The Saint of Montparnasse Brancusi was an admirer of 17 th c. Tibetan monk and poet, Milarepa of the Himalayas

(left) Constantin Brancusi, Sleep, 1908 (right) Medardo Rosso (Italian ) Ecce Puer, 1896 “We are nothing but a play of light” (Rosso)

Constantine Brancusi, Child Supplicant, bronze 1906 and Newborn, 1915 (right)

Constantin Brancusi, Sleeping Muse, life-size, bronze, 1910

Constantin Brancusi, The Origin of the World, 1924

Brancusi’s quest for the essential (true) “sign” is shared by Henri Matisse and many other modernists. Constantin Brancusi, clockwise from upper left: Supplicant Child, 1906; Sleep, 1908; Sleeping Muse 1910; Newborn, 1915; and two versions of The Origin of the World, 1920s

Constantin Brancusi, The Kiss, 1907 version (left) and the Memorial park at Tîrgu Jiu, Romania showing the The Gate of the Kiss, 1937 and part of contemplation group The Kiss, which symbolizes the marriage of the material and the spiritual, life and death, and in general the dialectical unification of the dualities of human experience

Brancusi, Table of Silence, Memorial Park at Tirgu Jiu, Romania, 1937

Brancusi, Endless Column, Memorial park at Tirjiu Jiu cast iron with copper coating, 1937

Brancusi, Endless Column, (left) under re-construction, 1999 (center) Segments of Endless Column (right) Donald Judd, (US Minimalist sculptor, ) Untitled, 1970

Constantin Brancusi, Bird in Space, 1925, marble, stone, and wood Brancusi’s Paris studio 1927 – photographs by Brancusi “All my life I have sought the essence of flight. Don’t look for mysteries. I give you pure joy. Look at the sculptures until you see them. Those closest to God have seen them”

Constantin Brancusi studio, Pompidou Center, Paris