Art

Symbols

John McEwen

Impressionism is the most popular of all modern art movements, but in its own day it went out of fashion to Symbolism. The symbolist painters answered the need for a more imaginative, epic and even religious view of existence. As a fashion they did not last long but some of their ideals, their exceptional contacts with literature and music, were incorporated into Expressionism, Surrealism and in our own time certain aspects of so-called Pop art. It was not till the 'sixties that the popular mood made their work acceptable again and this time the curators and the critics made sure that, at least art historically, it would stick.

Le Symbolisme en Europe at the Grand Palais till 19 July is the latest of a series of symbolist exhibitions and perhaps the most ambitious to date. It attempts to show, as its title suggests, that most European countries contributed significant paintings to the movement, whereas (and this implication is always present in discussing symbolism) Impressionism was largely a French, even Parisian, style. Now if this implication is carried further and the abstraction of so much New York painting

is seen as one result of Impressionism, then a restatement of the internationalism of Symbolism can also be interpreted as 3 'European attack on the still undisputed art. historical importance of American painting

since the last war. In such subtle ways are the true courses of politics revealed. The moods which give rise to the situations with which politics have to deal are subtler still

To explain the resurgence of interest it Symbolism the art historians have often drawn comparisons between the mood Of our own time and that of the 'eighties and 'nineties. There seems a widespread accer lance of their both being 'uneasy' periods. Undoubtedly, so have all periods been modern times, but it is true that they d° seem to have some more specific problenis

in common. Religious apathy, for instance. was besetting the Catholics following the intransigence of Pius IX and the liberal

compensations of his successor Leo XIII; materialism was discredited by the squalid results of industrialism; democracy, especl.

ally in France after the shock of the Cool' mune and during the economic stagnation of the Third Republic, was widely held to he a useless form of government. Rena° summed it all up when he wrote: 'Our

century is not moving towards either guo.d

or evil: it is moving towards mediocrity' But it should be borne in mind that there

were contrary reactions of equal force, There was 'Naturalism'—anathema I° symbolists—and much industrial and penal confidence as well. Both Moreas 5 symbolist manifesto and the Eiffel Tower

date from 1889. This seems worth mention'

ing because a similar variety of aims and reactions can be seen at the Grand Pala's'

largely through the effort of the organise°

to conform to a generalisation. To use the word 'Symbolism' to describe the diverse, imagery of a variety of artists from several countries over a period of sixty years merelY serves to beg questions.

The point is: what is symbolism? If refers only to painters who were inspired bY Moreas's manifesto then it refers to very

There is a case to be made for it being the first art inspired artificially, as it were, by exposure to the nineteenth-century inn0. vations of museums and cheap reprodue" tions. But that still does not explain gill) Burne-Jones is a symbolist any more than mythologist. Why Blake and Palmer are less, symbolically visionary than Rossetti. V° Redon is more symbolically macabre than Goya. Why Puvis de Chavannes is more Of° symbolist than Courbet—or Corot, or the Barbizons, or, if this argument is pursued. Ids logical absurdity, even the Impressionist themselves. And this looks no further than the nineteenth century. In failing to clarify this point Le SYfri; bolisme en Europe ends as a muddle. salon symbolism of Watts and Albert Moot; is a world and a mentality apart fronl the paranoia of Munch. Seldom, however, Ca.0 there have been a general exhibition le, France so flattering to British art. The 137,e Raphaelites, even Millais, are seen as in

seminal forces of the movement and the continuing British contribution is repre§ented by Beardsley, Crane and Mackintosh. But in terms of what is more precisely understood by symbolism in music and Literature, no one can compare with Proust's favourite painter Gustave Moreau, and to a lesser extent Odilon Redon. What a pity there was not a symbolist extravaganza in the 'sixties rather in the manner prescribed by Phillipe Jullian, to include all its expressions from Sarah Bernhardt's boudoir to (legalised) marijuana. It is too late now. At the Grand Palais a more stringent historical approach would have been the most one could have hoped for, showing how Romantic painting, and Symbolism must be seen in that tradition, has developed into our own time This would have made more sense of the upstairs galleries in particular, where Degouve de Nuncque so obviously foreshadows Magritte and there is even an early de Chirico.