Introduction to Symbolism
Have you ever explored a painting or a poem to get a deeper meaning from it? To understand it better, we will have to understand the mystical, dreamlike world of the Symbolism movement. Emerged out of rebellion and nourished by imagination, Symbolism wasn’t just a style—it was a statement. It is said, “There’s more beneath the surface.”
But what exactly was Symbolism? Let’s decode the myths.
Origins and Historical Context
Reaction Against Realism and Naturalism
In the late 19th century, artists and writers started to feel that Realism and Naturalism were just too… literal. They captured the outside world as it was in all its gritty detail, but what about dreams? Feelings? Spirituality?
Symbolists argued to go into the soul, instead of a microscopic view. This artistic rebellion paved the way for the Symbolism movement in France around the 1880s.
Influences from Romanticism
If Symbolism were a family tree, Romanticism would be its emotional, brooding grandparent. Symbolists adored a strong feeling and personal experience as much as Romantics did. However, Symbolists went one further and draped myth, metaphor, and mood on top of everything.
Key Features of the Symbolism Movement
Emphasis on Emotion and Imagination
Symbolism wasn’t about what you saw—it was about what you felt. Symbolist works tend to create moods, rather than convey an obvious story. Anticipate dark moods, indefinite desires, and emotional lucidity.
Use of Metaphor and Allegory
Their jam was symbols: roses to show passion, swans to show transformation, and darkness to show the unknown. The more loaded with meaning and metaphor, the better.
Spiritual and Mystical Themes
Symbolists weren’t just artists—they were almost mystics. They were fascinated with the invisible world: dreams, death, the divine, and the subconscious. Their art became a portal into otherworldly realms.
Leading Figures in Symbolism
Stéphane Mallarmé-A symbolist
He believed that poetry should reflect the ideal world, not the real one. His style of writing was thick, allusive and resembled a puzzle.
Gustave Moreau
He was a painter whose work looked like mythological dreams. Moreau’s paintings are loaded with color and symbolism, filled with biblical and mythic references.
Odilon Redon
Redon was attracted by dreams and the unconscious. His surrealist, ghostly imagery was proto-surrealism- floating eyes, unnatural hybrids, and glowing auras.
Paul Verlaine
A poet of the musical soul, Verlaine thought poems ought to be musical–fluid, emotional, subject to interpretation. He’s a master of atmosphere.
Symbolism Across Art Forms
Symbolism and Literature
Writers like Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Maeterlinck explained the language in another way. Their poems were oozed by abstractions, subtexts, and unrealistic imagery. You did not read their work; you did feel it.
Symbolism in Visual Arts
Symbolist painters went for mood over realism. No matter whether it was a ghostly face, a gloomy forest or a heavenly creature, the images were all freighted with emotional or metaphysical meaning.
Symbolism in Music and Theatre
Even composers got in on the act. Think of Claude Debussy and his dreamlike soundscapes. Symbolist theatre was also a thing- plays that were poetic, mysterious, and aimed at stirring the soul.
Symbolism vs. Other Movements
Symbolism and Surrealism
While Symbolism paved the way, Surrealism took it up a notch. Dreams and the subconscious were also studied by surrealists, who were more radical and politically oriented. Symbolists preferred elegant mystery to shock.
Symbolism and Impressionism
Both valued feeling over fact, but Impressionism was about light and moment, while Symbolism was all about depth and dream. You might say Impressionism looked outside, Symbolism looked within.
The Legacy of Symbolism
Influence on Modern and Contemporary Art
The Symbolism movement heavily influenced Modernism. Movements like Expressionism, Surrealism, and even Abstract are based on Symbolist ideas. Artists like Klimt, Munch, and Kandinsky are all indebted to Symbolism’s mystics.
Psychology, Symbolism, and Media
Today, almost all the modes of media, including films, books, and even video games, use symbolism to add meaning. Have you ever seen a bird in the air when a character gets his freedom? Or mirrors during moments of self-realization? That’s Symbolism, alive and well.
Final Thoughts
According to the Symbolism movement, everything is not predictable. Sometimes we cannot see the truth, but feel it. It invites us to explore the soul.