The French art historian Jean Clair has described Symbolism as the last heir of Romantic Naturphilosophie in its effort to unite man and the world. Clair maintains
67 Stewen 1998, 151.
68 Nietzsche 1968 [1886], 214.
69 On Nietzsche’s conception of the self, see Kain 2009 36-41, 51, 55, and passim; Nehamas 1985, 141-234;
Seigel 2005, 537-567;
70 Nietzsche 1968 [1901], 297-298 (The Will to Power).
71 See Kain 2009, 15-26.
72 See Hadot 1998 [1989], 23-34.
that the very word sym-bolon conveys the fundamental idea behind the Symbolist project, which he perceives as “... nothing but a desperate attempt to re-establish links between fragmented representations of the subject, to recapture a unity threatened by the dislocating forces that the new psychology was only just beginning to define and remedy.” Symbolist artists sought unity in the Romantic spirit but at the same time they realized the impossibility of attaining it by means of a material work of art. Clair has observed that in addition to the unifying tendency (sýmbolon:
“to throw together”) there was also a diabolical tendency (diabolos: “that which divides”) which leads to psychological as well as physical disintegration. Indeed, he notes that Romanticism already contained in itself the seed of its own dissolution, that is, “The crisis of the subject and the collapse of the primacy of the conscious mind.”73 The Symbolist movement was powered by a tension created by these opposing aspirations, and to understand this complex phenomenon, one has to take into account both sides: the one that is trying to hold on to the ideal, and the other that is at the same time ripping it apart.
The German art historian Hans Belting has argued that throughout the modern period (that is, the era of the art museum and the avant-garde), artistic production has been based on an ideal of absolute art that is impossible to capture in any single material object.74 His claim is that this seemingly auto-destructive tendency has in fact been precisely what has fuelled art and driven it to search for new means of expression. The absolute work of art encompassed the ideal that served as a yardstick for all actual works but it could only exist beyond the actual material object. It was an unattainable dream that loomed somewhere behind the creative process and it could be manifested in the work of art only as long as it remained in an unfinished state. The old masterpieces of bygone eras, thereafter, gained an aura of melancholy for they seemed to have succeeded in the task that for the modern artist had become impossible to complete.75 At the same time, these artworks, as sublime as they were, appeared to be completely separated from the modern existence of the fin-de-siècle artist. Consequently, new forms of art would need to be invented if art was to have any significance in the modern world. In order to keep the
73 Clair 1995a, 20; Clair 1995b, 126, 128.
74 In his book The Invisible Masterpiece (2001) Belting presents a conceptual history of art centred on the idea of absolute art. He traces the history and development of the modern conception art from its beginnings at Romanticism to the period after the Second World War when art production increasingly turned away from the traditional idea of the “work” as the definitive end of the creative process. The book was originally published in German in 1998 as Das Unsichtbare Meisterwerk. Die modernen Mythen der Kunst). The English edition omits three chapters from the original German version.
75 Belting 2001, 12. There probably is not a better illustration for this idea than Henry Fuseli’s The Artist Overwhelmed by the Grandeur of Antique Ruins, 1778-79. The modern artist who sits in mourning is physically dwarfed by the size of the sculpture fragments that are all that remains of the magnificent whole that once was there. Even in fragmentary form – or perhaps precisely due to their fragmentary form – the grandeur of these monuments of the past is too much for the artist to bear. See Nochlin 1994, 7-8.
ideal alive, then, one would have to somehow liberate it from the constraints of the art object.76
The starting point for Belting’s thesis is the novel The Unknown Masterpiece (Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu, 1831) by Honoré de Balzac. It is a story about a work of art that remained hidden inside the studio of the old artist Frenhofer for several years. This painting was to become the artist’s ultimate masterpiece, but when he finally revealed it to his friends, they could see nothing but a wall of colours.
Frenhofer had destroyed the whole painting by effacing and repainting it time and time again in the effort of making a work of art that would surpass reality. The story of Frenhofer’s failed masterpiece has both fascinated and unnerved modern artists like Cézanne, Gauguin, and Picasso. Belting discusses several real-life versions of the story, such as Cézannes metamorphoses of The Bathers or Rodin’s Gates of Hell, which just like Frenhofer’s masterpiece gained a mythical status by remaining in an unfinished state in the artist’s studio. These are examples of works of art in which the creative process of the artist has gained mastery over the end product. So in fact, as Belting puts it:
... the long-hidden work was not, after all, Frenhofer’s masterpiece, but a failed attempt to make art itself visible in an authoritative and definitive epiphany. While in real works, art necessarily becomes an object, the ideal of art had to be released from such reification in order to serve the unbound imagination. As long as no-one was able to create the kind of work that qualified as absolute art, painters and sculptors could continue in the hope that one day this remote goal would be realized.77
I have quoted this passage because it sums up Belting’s central thesis in an illustrative and clear manner, and even more importantly, because it contains concepts that are central for this study and for my application of Belting’s theory.
These concepts are “epiphany” and “imagination.” The concept of imagination, which Belting does not treat in his book apart from a couple of passing remarks, is essential for a profound understanding of modern art and its shift away from the material object. The conflict between the work and idea can also be considered as a conflict between imagination and its manifestation.
The concept of the symbol as it was understood in the Romantic context provides the basis for the aesthetic theory of Symbolism.78 The meaning of the
76 Belting sees the new kinds of artistic practice that emerged in the twentieth century, such as performance art, conceptual art or video installation, as manifestations of the attempt to free art from the compulsory effort to produce works, while still holding on to the goal of producing art. Belting 2001, 14-15.
77 Belting 2001, 11.
78 The centrality of Romanticism and the post-Kantian philosophical tradition has been discussed by several writers as an important element of the intellectual background of modern art (e.g. Bowie 2003; Mul 1999;
Rosenblum 1975; Wiedman 1979). Studies on Symbolist art, however, usually have not laid special emphasis on this aspect. At least to a certain extent, this can be explained by the fact that Romantic ideas were often transmitted indirectly through the writings of Baudelaire or through mystical ideologies, for example. Indeed, in the eclectic cultural climate of the fin-de-siècle, it is often very difficult to identify the specific sources for particular ideas. Nevertheless, in an intellectual environment where the “Latin” civilization was perceived to be in a state of decadence, and all things German were given high prestige, it was not unexpected that artists turned towards German philosophy in order to find inspiration and support for their beliefs. Certainly, there were those
symbol in the specific Romantic sense can best be articulated as an opposition to allegory. The philosopher Tzvetan Todorov summarizes it in the following way in his book Theories of the Symbol:
[The symbol] is productive, intransitive, motivated; it achieves the fusion of contraries;
it is and it signifies at the same time; its content eludes reason: it expresses the inexpressible. In contrast, allegory ... is already made, transitive, arbitrary, pure signification, an expression of reason.79
This modern conception was initiated by Kant, who identified the symbol with intuition rather than abstract reasoning. In the formulations of Goethe and Schelling, among others, the symbol was then established as a cornerstone of Romantic theory.80 The symbol evokes a visualization of the invisible; it is a revelation of something that otherwise would be beyond our reach. Art is no longer understood in terms of imitation but as revelation. Thomas Carlyle, for instance, wrote:
In the Symbol proper, what we can call a Symbol, there is ever, more or less distinctly and directly, some embodiment and revelation of the Infinite; the Infinite is made to blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible, and as it were, attainable there.81
Carlyle was an important transmitter of German Romantic thought for the Symbolist generation; his popular book Sartor Resartus presented these difficult philosophical notions in very approachable form. Carlyle’s popularity in late nineteenth-century France was at least partly due to Hippolyte Taine’s influential publication L’Idéalisme anglais (1864) which was devoted to the philosophy of Carlyle. Although Taine has often been seen as a materialist and a positivist, and his approach towards art criticism was enthusiastically refuted by Aurier, his influence on the Symbolist aesthetic should not be ignored.82 In fact, it may be argued that Taine was as much an idealists as he was a positivist. In a letter to a friend in 1862 he claimed to be in accordance with Carlyle's view that the man of genius has insight, that is, an immediate perception of the essence of things: “You who are
among the Symbolist artists and writers who were reading, for example, Kant, Hegel, Novalis, or Schelling.
Remy de Gourmont, for instance, was well versed in German philosophy, and he referred directly to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason in his definition of Symbolism, stating that because the Absolute as such is unknowable, it must be formulated in symbols. Hence, it is only the element of the Absolute that can appear in the personal that Symbolism can express. See de Gourmont 1911 [1892], 223-224 (Le Chemin de Velours). In the context of literary Symbolism, the German influence has always been a more central subject than in the context of Symbolist visual art. Lehmann, for example, placed a strong emphasis on it in his seminal study on the intellectual basis of the Symbolist aesthetic. He writes that while Naturalism and Realism were considered to be of a largely French origin, the idealistic current that rebelled against them was “represented mainly by early nineteenth century German philosophy enjoying an Indian summer in a tropical climate – Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer.” Lehmann 1950, 37.
79 Todorov 1982 [1977] 2, 206. Originally published in French as Théories du Symbole (1977).
80 See Todorov 1982 [1977], 198-221.
81 Carlyle 1900 [1836], 254 (Sartor Resartus).
82 On Taine’s influence on the theory of Symbolism, see Burhan 1979, 78-90.
familiar with my ideas, you know very well that I am actually an idealist.”83 Taine combined different elements from Platonism to nineteenth century Realism in his conception of art. He believed that art copied from nature but in a way that made it more perfect. A great artist was someone who knew how to bring into accordance the expression and the idea, the sensation and the sentiment.84 As we shall see below, this is not so different from Aurier's view of the subjective and objective elements of art. In addition to his views on Carlyle, many Symbolist were familiar with Taine’s psychological study De l’intelligence (1870), which as Burhan has pointed out,
“offered artists an argument against Naturalism, while providing them with most of the theoretical material needed to construct a theory of symbolist representation in art.”85
The Romantic notion of the symbol also underlies the ideal of the absolute work of art as described by Belting – and, as Belting has pointed out, this quest for a unity of matter and form, work and idea was a fundamentally impossible project.86 Taylor has used the term “epiphanic” to describe this kind of art which is a revelation of something that is otherwise inexpressible. The epiphany, according to Taylor, “is our achieving contact with something, where this contact either fosters and/or itself constitutes a spiritually significant fulfilment or wholeness.”87 The modern work of art, according to Taylor, is “the locus of a manifestation which brings us into the presence of something which is otherwise inaccessible, and which is of the highest moral or spiritual significance; a manifestation, moreover, which also defines or completes something, even as it reveals.”88 This view of art defines the artist as an exceptional being. As someone who delivers “epiphanies,” the artist must possess a rare vision and be able to see things that ordinary people are incapable of perceiving.
Referring to the conception of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Taylor defines the symbol in the Romantic sense as “the translucence of the eternal in the temporal.” The perfect work of art is thus understood as the perfect unity of form and matter: “In a perfect work of art, the ‘matter’ – the language of a poem or the material of a sculpture – should be entirely taken up in the manifestation; and reciprocally, what is manifested ought to be available only in the symbol, and not merely pointed to as an independent object whose nature could be defined in some other medium.”89
83 “Toi qui connais bien mes idées, tu sais bien qu'en somme je suis un idéaliste.” Goetz 1973, 50. Both Goetz and Burhan also point out Taine’s enthusiasm for Hegel. Goetz has noted, moreover, that Taine’s world view was inherently pessimistic, but he belived in the evolution of new art form that would me more suited for the needs of future societies. This was most certainly also something that the Symbolists were able to relate to. Burhan 1979, 78; Goetz 1973, 52-54 and passim.
84 Goetz 1973, 50-52.
85 Burhan 1979, 81.
86 Belting 2001, 12.
87 Taylor 1989, 425. On the notion of epiphanic art, see also Rabinovitch 2002, 29-33. According to Rabinovitch,
“The epiphany embodies the uniquely modern experience of the sacred. Expressed in mutable, mundane images, the epiphany lies on the threshold between the secular and the sacred. Characterized by a heightened sense of significance, and charged by fluid boundaries in time and space, the reflective capacity of the epiphany informs the experience of secular insight, revelation or self-realization, and religious meditation.” Rabinovitch 2002., 33.
88 Taylor 1989, 419.
89 Taylor 1989, 379,421.
A purely mimetic understanding of the work is no longer enough, even if the works may still contain descriptive elements. In fact, Taylor distinguishes two different ways for an artwork to be epiphanic. The first pattern, which he calls
“epiphanies of being”, was dominant with the Romantics. This kind of work portrays something, for example, nature or human emotion, but its aim is to render the object
“translucent” so that some kind of spirituality or deeper significance shines through it. The second pattern became dominant in modernist poetry and non-representational art in the twentieth century. Here, more than ever before, the locus of the epiphany shifts to within the work itself and it is no longer clear what the work portrays or whether it portrays anything at all.90 The Symbolist art of the fin-de-siècle usually more or less follows Taylor’s Romantic mode but in the increasing instability of form evident in the work of Paul Gauguin, Odilon Redon or Edvard Munch, for example, there is also a certain affinity to the second mode. 91 It must be noted, that there are important continuities between the epiphanic art of Romanticism and of the twentieth century. As Taylor points out, the Romantic era developed a rich language of talking about the organic unity of the work of art or the creative process which also applies to later epiphanic art. He maintains that this is a conception of art that has run continuously through the modern world since Romanticism and it “encompasses not only an aesthetic of the work of art but also a view about its spiritual significance and about the nature and situation of the artist.”92
What is particularly important in the concept of the symbol as it was understood by the Romantics and later reformulated by the Symbolists is the way that it defined the ideal work of art as organic, dynamic, and “processual.”93 It is, therefore, inherently connected with the notion of the creative imagination, which will be the subject of the following section. The creative imagination is precisely the capacity that is needed to create as well as receive symbolic works of art. Moreover, the Romantic concept of the symbol is related to the idea that it is not the work of art that imitates nature but the artist; the work of art is only able to imitate products of nature whereas the artist can imitate the dynamic processes of nature. In his imitation of the productive principle of nature, the artist’s creative capacity emulates the
90 Taylor 1989,419-420.
91 Sari Kuuva has discussed the dynamic quality of the symbols employed by Munch in her dissertation Symbol, Munch and Creativity: Metabolism of Visual Symbols (2010). She uses the concept of “metabolism,” borrowed from Munch’s own vocabulary, to describe the way Symbols are born, established and transformed in Munch’s visual repertoire. Kuuva perceives this kind of flexibility in the use of symbols as specific for Munch’s artistic practices, and Munch’s oeuvre inarguably offers one of the most fruitful sources for a discussion of this phenomenon. However, the basic idea that the meaning of the symbol is dynamic and not based on convention, that it is capable of reflecting different, even completely opposing, meanings in different contexts, is according to my conception, a very central notion of the Symbolist aesthetic.
92 Taylor 1989, 420, 425.
93 By the somewhat technical term “processual” I mean art that is oriented towards the creative process rather than focusing on the work of art as a material object. I shall give a more detailed definition of this term in the last section of this chapter.
divine creativity of God. Hence, in the creative processes of art, the mind of the artist intersects the divine power of God.94