Symbolist Art History

“The image created is that of an altarpiece in which Madame Roulin takes on the role of the Virgin Mary as Stella Maris and in which the sunflowers can be associated with Christ.” – Dr. Evert van Uitert, 1980.

“His Berceuse culminated his art of sacred realism, shorn of miraculous rescues and visionary ruminations but  nonetheless vested with spiritual force and the consoling function associated with religious art.” – Dr. Debora Silverman, 2000.

In other words, Vincent painted his Madonna and Child with neither a Madonna nor a child. Over the same creative period, he crafted his original starry night, Café Teras. This paper demonstrates it was intended to be a uniquely innovated Last Supper.

“The patron of painters — St Luke — physician, painter, evangelist — having for his symbol — alas — nothing but the ox — is there to give us hope.” — Vincent van Gogh

Rembrandt’s depictions of a Slaughtered Ox include one version in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow, the other in The Louvre. This paper focuses on the latter as no evidence exists van Gogh witnessed the first, while his letters explicitly reveal he viewed the oil on beech panel in Paris. From Joseph Muller’s venture that Rembrandt’s ox may be representative of death, to Kenneth Craig’s arguments that a sixteenth century Dutch interpretation of the Prodigal Son parable (Luke 15:11-32) where the killing of a “fatted calf” properly alludes to Christ's sacrifice, to Avigdor Posèq’s more recent explication that it’s a metaphor for human torment, the painting has recently enjoyed a rich interpretive history. This paper seeks to illustrate that Vincent van Gogh held dearly his own ideas about the painting; a Symbolist interpretation that includes and supersedes all of the above.

This book is the first full-length study of the art and writings of Jean Delville. As a member of the younger generation that emerged during the end of the nineteenth century, he was a dynamic leader of a group of avant-garde artists who sought to establish a new school of Idealist Art in Belgium. He was one of the most talented painters of his generation, producing a vast body of works that, in both scale and technical accomplishment, is unsurpassed amongst his contemporaries. In his extensive writings in contemporary journals and books, he pursued a singular vision for the purpose of art to serve as a vehicle for social change, as well as to inspire individuals to be drawn to a higher, spiritual reality. Delville’s thinking is heavily indebted to the hermetic and esoteric philosophy that was widely popular at the time, and his paintings, poetry and writings reformulate the main tenets of this tradition in a contemporary context. In this regard, his aesthetic and artistic goals are similar, if not identical, to those found in the writings and art of Kandinsky and Mondrian during the early twentieth century. By focussing on the historical and theoretical contexts of his paintings, as well as the practical application of his ideas through an analysis of several key works, this book provides a comprehensive and detailed study of Delville’s life, art and writings during his formative years that formed the mainstay of his art for the rest of his long and highly productive career. Unlike many of his contemporaries in the non-realist tradition, Delville sought to draw together the realities of the physical world with the metaphysical dimension through art that served, therefore, as a gateway between nature and the Absolute.

This is an early thesis examining the phenomenology of the image of the feminine in Symbolist Art. Much of the work here formed the foundation for later published papers including, 'Nature and the Ideal in Fernand Khnopff's Avec Verhaeren: Un Ange and Art, or the Caresses'. The framework of this study could still be a stimulus for further research into this neglected area of the field of Symbolist Art and its symbolism and iconography. The end chapter is a draft paper that suggests strong links with the Jungian perspective on the nature of the anima. There are many historical and intellectual links between the iconography of Symbolist Art and Jung's ideas that are worth exploring further.

Jean Delville was not only a gifted painter, but also a prolific author, poet and polemicist. He is unique amongst his artistic contemporaries for having written extensively on the subject of Idealism in art. Idealist philosophy, as an intellectual influence, was fairly pervasive amongst contemporary non-realist authors, poets and painters; the core nineteenth-century influence in this regard was the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer. Delville, however, took a different path, particularly in his seminal book, La Mission de l'Art, and his various polemical essays on the subject, which reflect, rather, key ideas derived from the writings of the German Idealist, G.W.F. Hegel. Hegel's influence on late-nineteenth century non-realist art is understated in the literature. This paper analyses the main ideas of Delville's La Mission de l'Art in the context of Hegelian Idealism. It focuses on key areas of this tradition, specifically with regard to the nature of the Idea and the Ideal, the relation of the Ideal to the natural world, the relation between the Idea and the notion of BEAUTY and the special role of the artist in revealing the Idea in physical form.

Na związki twórczości lirycznej Paula Verlaine’a z muzyką zwracano uwagę już od momentu publikacji jego debiutanckiego tomu poetyckiego Poèmes saturniens w 1866 roku. Kolejne zbiory potwierdzały tezę o silnej inspiracji „biednego Leliana” sztuką dźwięków – jej aluzyjnością, wieloznacznością, ale jednocześnie możliwością wyrażania najwznioślejszych uczuć i stanów duszy. Verlaine’owskie próby tworzenia liryków na wzór wypowiedzi muzycznych osiągnęły apogeum w tomie Romances sans paroles, którego tytuł stanowi nawiązanie do miniatur fortepianowych F. Mendelssohna i R. Schumanna. Zainteresowanie Verlaine’a brzmieniowym wymiarem utworów lirycznych słabnie wraz z deklaracją „zmiany systemu”, która nastąpiła podczas pobytu poety w więzieniu, i w związku z jego nawróceniem na katolicyzm. „Urodzony pieśniarz” nigdy jednak nie wyzbył się predylekcji do nadawania wierszom „pieśniowego” tonu, stąd wiele z jego późniejszych dzieł zbliża się pod względem ekspresyjnym do tych tworzonych w czasach literackiej świetności. Ta jednorodność nastroju, nazywanego czasem „muzycznym smutkiem”, decyduje o oryginalności dorobku poetyckiego Verlaine’a.

As a result of translating Delville's poetry anthologies it was discovered that one of his major poems from his first anthology relates directly to a finished drawing,  ‘L’Allégorie de l’Enfer’, that came up for sale in 2015. The current essay is an analysis of the drawing and discusses the correlations with his poem 'Azrael'.

Despite the peripheral character of Greek modernism, the history of early twentieth- century culture in Greece is marked by processes, conflicts and fashions paralleling the developments in other European countries. It is not therefore surprising that as recent studies have demonstrated the so-called occult revival did exert a certain influence upon late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Greek culture. In Greece, heterodox forms of spirituality and “scientific” metaphysics proved to be appealing to the neo-romantic and symbolist circles but also to several scientists and intellectuals of the time. Spiritualism, Theosophy, Sar Peladan’s mysticism, Neo-Buddhism and psychical research were in vogue following the paradigm of the “civilized” European West. This paper aims to sketch out the ways heterodox spirituality, and most specifically Theosophy, interacted with contemporaneous Greek literature and art and throw some light on the appropriations and adaptations of the Theosophical discourse in early twentieth-century Greece. Considering that the Theosophical Society of Greece was officially founded in 1928, the dissemination and infiltration of Theosophical ideas in Greece in the first decades of the twentieth century offers an interesting case study. The paper will contextualize the paradox of the early interest of certain literary and artistic circles in Theosophy and other heterodox currents and the belated arrival and problematic position of institutionalized Theosophy in Greece. It will also focus on the formulation of an “occultist orthodoxy”, as the poet Kostis Palamas had termed it, by certain Greek intellectuals in an attempt to assimilate, Christianize and Hellenize Theosophical and other occult ideas for their purposes and political agendas. Selected examples will expose the peculiarities and complexities of the relationship between Theosophy and Greek modernism and elaborate on the difficulty in charting Theosophical appropriations in the visual culture of modern Greece.

An exercise exploring shared visual motifs in the art of Danny Malboeuf ("Kolaboy", https://www.kolaboy.com/) and Dino Valls (https://www.dinovalls.com/?lang=en).
[Academia document retired 2021 due to link rot; document with updated links available on Scribd, see link provided under heading "1 File".]

Joséphin Péladan (Sâr Merodack, 1858-1918) was a key figure in the inception and development of fin-de-siècle French Symbolism. His Salon de la Rose et Croix, though short-lived, was perhaps one of the most ambitious artistic undertakings the 19th century French art world had seen, featuring unique exhibitions and productions seeking to unite the arts into a revival of initiatory drama, with a philosophical underpinning rooted in the Western esoteric traditions, and with the ultimate goal of the spiritual regeneration of society. Central to Péladan’s vision was his conception of the artist as initiate; select individuals who could bring a small part of the divine into the mundane sphere.
The majority of accounts of Péladan’s life and work commonly focus on his eccentricity, on isolated elements of his life and work, or on his interrelationship with other figures in a literary or social context. Yet, wherever 19th century art and esotericism overlap, Péladan’s influence appears as a parallel, though more practical current, to the Theosophical Society. Where Blavatsky sought to intellectualize and integrate aspects of esoteric thought with evolutionism and science, Péladan sought revolution against realism and the re-enchantment of what he saw as a disintegrating and decadent society. He sought to ‘establish a nucleus from which would emanate a whole set of religious, moral, and aesthetic values’ in an attempt to ‘return the soul to beauty and the innocence of Eden.’ His mission and life’s work was the reinstatement of the philosophia perennis of the Renaissance philosophers through the ritualization of art, which according to him, would function as the manifestation of the divine in matter.
In this paper I propose to present the core of Péladan’s vision of the artist as initiate, illustrated through the key concepts of Symbolist art that he inspired. Following an overview of the context of the French occult revival, the paper will outline the role, influences, and impact of his philosophy, demonstrating the key role that it played in the overt marriage of art and occult symbolism during the French occult revival.