Symbolist painting

Symbolism in painting took its direction from the poets and literary theorists of the movement, but it also represented a reaction against the objectivist aims of Realism and the increasingly influential movement of Impressionism. In contrast to the relatively concrete representation these movements sought, Symbolist painters favoured works based on fantasy and the imagination. The Symbolist position in painting was authoritatively defined by the young critic Albert Aurier, an enthusiastic admirer of Paul Gauguin, in an article in the Mercure de France (1891). He elaborated on Moréas’s contention that the purpose of art “is to clothe the idea in sensuous form” and stressed the subjective, symbolical, and decorative functions of an art that would give visual expression to the inner life. Symbolist painters turned to the mystical and even the occult in an attempt to evoke subjective states of mind by visual forms.

Such Postimpressionist painters as Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh as well as the Nabis may be regarded as Symbolists in certain aspects of their art. However, the painters who are truly representative of Symbolist aesthetic ideals include three principal figures: Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. Moreau was a figurative painter who created scenes based on legendary or ancient themes. His highly original style utilized brilliant, jewel-like colours to portray the ornate, sumptuous interiors of imaginary temples and palaces in which scantily clad figures are caught in statuesque poses. His work is characterized by exotic eroticism and decorative splendour. Redon explored mystical, fantastic, and often macabre themes in his paintings and graphics. His paintings stress the poetics of colour in their delicate harmonies of hues, while his subject matter was highly personal in its mythical and dreamlike figures. Puvis de Chavannes is now remembered primarily as a muralist.

Symbolist theatre

Dramatists also took their lead from the French Symbolist poets, especially from Mallarmé. As drama critic for La Dernière Mode during the 1870s, Mallarmé opposed the dominant Realist theatre and called for a poetic theatre that would evoke the hidden mystery of man and the universe. Drama, for Mallarmé, should be a sacred rite in which the poet-dramatist revealed the correspondences between the visible and invisible worlds through the suggestive power of his poetic language. For the Symbolist playwright, the deeper truths of existence, known instinctively or intuitively, could not be directly expressed but only indirectly revealed through symbol, myth, and mood. The principal Symbolist playwrights were Maurice Maeterlinck in Belgium and Auguste Villiers de L’Isle-Adam and Paul Claudel in France. Also influenced by Symbolist beliefs were the Swedish playwright August Strindberg and the Irish poet and dramatist W.B. Yeats.

Noteworthy examples of Symbolist theatre include Villiers de L’Isle-Adam’s Axël (first performed 1884; definitive edition 1890), Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande (1892), with its dreamlike atmosphere, and the highly satirical Ubu roi (1896) by Alfred Jarry. In 1890 the French poet Paul Fort founded the Theatre d’Art, where Symbolist dramas were presented along with readings from ancient and modern poetry. When Fort retired in 1892 Aurélien Lugné-Poë continued Symbolist production at his Théâtre de l’Oeuvre well into the 20th century. Though Symbolist theatre did not last long as a unified movement, its sharp break with the realistic tradition along with its reliance on fantasy, atmosphere, and mood influenced 20th-century playwrights and theatrical production.