The Symbolism is a plastic art and literary movement that was originated in France in the decade of 1880, parallel to the post-impressionism, and that arose like reaction to the implicit realistic focus inside the Impressionism.
The Impressionism, like the Idealism and the Academic Naturalism had themselves identified with the contemporary, political, moral and intellectual problems. The artists of 1885 displeased because the incapacity of the society to resolve these problems,
they sought new values based on the spiritual ones. They desire to create a painting not subordinate to the reality of that moment. They reject all what was connected with the daily life, the conglomeration, the industrial activity and the degradation.
It goes creating a state of deception against the scientific positivism, and a reality beyond the empirical thing is discovered. To this position it contributes Schopenhauer's philosophy. In his opposition to the positivism, he insists that the visible world is a mere appearance that only acquires importance when we are conscious that it is only through it that we can find the eternal truth. He defends not to paint the object itself, but to transcend to other environments through the intuition and the contemplation.
The symbolists consider that a work of art should be inspired for emotions caused
by the experience. They try to externalize an idea, to analyze the inself. They are interested in the capacity to suggest, to establish correspondences between
the objects and the sensations. They are attracted for the mystery and the occultism. They feel the need to express a different reality to the tangible one , opening their
minds toward the spirituality. The symbol becomes their instrument of communication.
These symbols come from a rare and ideal world. They are representations of figures
that trascend the material world. There is an inclination toward
the supernatural values, toward the world of the shadows.
The interior search , the revelation of Freud about the dreams and of the existence of an irrational part inside the human beings are concepts applied to the symbolist program. They cultivate the subjectivism and they reject the reasoning. It will surface the interest for the Christianity and for others traditions. They study the ambiguity, the hermaphrodite beauty , the androgynous beings,
The woman sprouts from the world of the unconscious.To scape from the reality she is painted as an sphinx, a siren, an spider or a winged genius. The beings that appear in that world of dreams will be incorporated at the simbolist painting. They lend special attention to the form, but they put it to the service of some idea that go beyond the pure appearance. They express their dreams and fantasies through the allusion to the symbol and to a rich ornamentation. At times they utilize strong colors to stand out the dream sense of the supernatural things. It can be told that the Simbolist painting is a painting of synthetic and subjective ideas.
This way, we can say that the new movement is linked to the mystery and to the spiritual essence of the Objects and of the beings. The symbolist painters represent beings surrounded by a magic breeze and by mysterious landscapes of indefinite meanings.
The symbolism presents a stylistic variety that it is explained for the supremacy of the idea over the form.
The precursors of this new painting are Gustave Moreau (1826-1898), Puvis of Chavannes and Odilon Redon.
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