From the Age of Symbolism to Expressionism

Introduction
Art in the twentieth century, like the social environment in which it was produced, underwent a process of
constant and rapid change. Painting in Europe no longer had to represent external reality through a series of
pictorial conventions - historical events could be accurately recorded instead through the newer media of
photography and film. Changes in the structure of the art market, too, away from the grand public "Salons' to
a system of private galleries and collectors, meant that paintings could be smaller, more personal and more
experimental. Artists could respond to the changing reality around them and could also aim to be 'modern' to
produce paintings that were innovative and exciting, full of radical new effects and new meanings.
Strauss's Elektra represented a move toward expressionism and the transformation of late 19th-century
chromatic tonality. This trend was continued in Schoenberg's Erwartung, based on free-atonality,
expressionism, and symbolic meaning. Berg's Wozzeck is then discussed as a symbol of the oppressed and the
peak of expressionism.
Symbolism
As opposed to Impressionism, in which the emphasis was on the reality of the created paint surface itself,
Symbolism was both an artistic and a literary movement that suggested ideas through symbols and
emphasized the meaning behind the forms, lines, shapes, and colors. The works of some of its proponents
exemplify the ending of the tradition of representational art coming from Classical times.
Symbolism can also be seen as being at the forefront of modernism, in that it developed new and often
abstract means to express psychological truth and the idea that behind the physical world lay a spiritual
reality. Symbolists could take the ineffable, such as dreams and visions, and give it form.
Symbolism in the visual arts had its sources in early 19th-century Romanticism's emphasis on the imagination,
rather than reason, and the themes first evident in the writer Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal (1857).
Additional sources include the personal visions of painter and poet William Blake, the aestheticism of the Pre-
Raphaelite Brotherhood in England, and the poetic, allegorical, moody dream worlds created by Edward
Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, and Pierre Puvis de Chavaınes. Symbolism was in many ways a reaction
against moralism, rationalism. and materialism of the 1880s. This fin-de-siècle period was a period of malaise-
a sickness of dissatisfaction. Artists felt a need to go beyond naturalism in art, and like other forms of art and
entertainment at the time, such as ballet and the cabaret, Symbolism served as a means of escape.
Symbolist Theory and Albert Aurier
An offshoot of the literary Symbolism that influenced visual art was the field of art criticism, particularly that
of Albert Aurier. In 1891 he wrote, in what became essentially a Symbolist manifesto, that art should be
1. Idéiste (Ideative) - expressing an idea.
2. Symbolist since it expresses that idea through form.
3. Synthetic since it expresses those forms and signs in a way that is generally understandable.
4. Subjective since the object. is only an indication of an idea perceived by the subject.
5. And as a result it will also be Decorative - since decorative painting is at once an art that is
synthetic, symbolist, and ideative.
Concepts and Styles
The period in which the Symbolists worked was marked by confusion regarding moral, social, religious, and
intellectual attitudes. The world was expanding beyond European norms; socialism no longer consisted of the
benevolent intentions with which it set out. The relationship between love and marriage was being
questioned, as was religion. Artists, in particular, felt that they were isolated and separate from the
bourgeoisie. Yet the idea of the spiritual was essential in the development of Symbolism. It reflected the anti-
materialist philosophies that were concerned with mysticism (a direct connection 'and unity with the ultimate
reality). An interest in the occult was related to this concept, as was a taste for the morbid and perverse, as
this period is often described as one of "decadence" (a period of artistic or moral decline as seen in the
preference for the artificial over the natural - and by extension, the idea that even humanity was in decline).
English writer Oscar Wilde's works and the French writer Joris-Karl Huysman's À Rebours (Against Nature)
(1884), as well as the art of many of the Symbolists, reflect this decadence. The most important art of the
symbolist is Death and the Masks by James Ensor.
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau, ornamental style of art that flourished between about 1890 and 1910 throughout Europe and
the United States. Art Nouveau is characterized by its use of a long, sinuous, organic line and was employed
most often in architecture, interior design, jewelry and glass design, posters, and illustration. It was a
deliberate attempt to create a new style, free of the imitative historicism that dominated much of 19th-
century art and design. Art Nouveau developed first in England and soon spread to the European continent,
where it was called Jugendstil in Germany, Sezessionstil in Austria, Stile Floreale (Stile Liberty) in Italy, and
Modernismo (Modernista) in Spain. The term 'Art Nouveau' was coined by a gallery in Paris that exhibited
much of this work.
History of Art Nouveau
The term "Art Nouveau" stemmed from the name of the Parisian art gallery, called "La Maison de l'Art
Nouveau", owned by the avant-garde art collector Siegfried Bing (1838-1905), which showcased works created
in the Art Nouveau style. The gallery's reputation and fame was considerably boosted by its installations of
modern furniture, tapestries and objets d'art at the 1900 Exposition Universelle, after which the gallery's
name became almost synonymous with the style.
At the same time, in Belgium, the style was promoted by Les Vingt and La Libre Esthetique, while in Germany
the style was popularized and promoted by a magazine called Jugend: Münchner illustrierte Wochenschrift für
Kunst und 135 Leben (Youth: the illustrated weekly magazine of art and lifestyle of Munich) which is why
German Art Nouveau - along with that of the Netherlands, the Balt and the Nordic countries - has since been
known as "Jugendstil" (youth -style In Austria, Art Nouveau was first popularized by artists of the Vienna
Secession movement, leading to the adoption of the name "Sezessionstil." The Viena Secessionists, like Joseph
Maria Olbrich (1867-1908), influenced art and architecture throughout Austria and Hungary, In Germany, after
the Munich Secession (182 and the Berlin Secession (1898), many of its leading practitioners came together
again in 1907 as members of the Deutscher Werkbund (German Work Federation).
Characteristics of Art Nouveau
There is no single definition or meaning of Art Nouveau. But the following are distinguishing factors. (1) Art
Nouveau philosophy favored applying artistic designs to everyday objects to make beautiful things available to
everyone. No object was too utilitarian to be "beautified." (2) Art Nouveau saw no separation in principle
between fine art (painting and sculpture) and applied er decorative arts (ceramics, furniture, and other
practical objects). (3) In content, the style was a reaction to a world of art dominated by the precise geometry
of Neoclassical forms. It sought a new graphic design language, as far away as possible from the historical and
classical models employed by the art academies. (4) Art Nouveau remains something of an umbrella term
which embraces a variety of stylistic interpretations. Some artists used new low-cost materials and mass
production methods while others used more expensive materials and valued high craftsmanship.
Types of Designs
In line with the Art Nouveau philosophy that art should become part c everyday life, it employed flat,
decorative patterns that could be used in all art forms. Typical decorative elements include leaf and tendril
motifs, intertwined organic forms, mostly curvaceous in shape, although rightangled designs were also
prevalent in Scotland and in Austria. Art made in this style typically depicted lavish birds, flowers, insects and
other zoomorphs, as well as the hair and curvaceous bodies of beautiful women. For Art Nouveau
architectural designs, see the exaggerated bulbous forms of the Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926).
and the stylistic Parisian Metro entrances of Hector Guimard (1867-1942).
Applications
Art Nouveau designs were most common in glassware, jewelry, and other decorative objects like ceramics. But
the style was also applied to textiles, household silver, domestic utensils, cigarette cases, furniture and
lighting, as well as drawing poster art, painting and book illustration. Theatrical design of sets and costumes
was another area in which the new style flourished. The best examples are the designs created by Leon Bakst
(1866-1924) and Alexander Benois (1870-1960) for Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. Art Nouveau also had a
strong application in the field of architecture and interior design. In this area it exemplified a more humanistic
and less functionalist approach to the urban environment. Hyperbolas and parabolas in windows, arches, and
doors were typical as were plant derived forms for moldings. Art Nouveau interior designers updated some of
the more abstract elements of Rococo style, such as flame and shell textures, and also employed highly
stylized organic forms, expanding the 'natural repertoire to include seaweed, grasses, and insects. Art
Nouveau architectural designs made broad use of exposed iron and large, irregular pieces of glass.
Famous Art
Nouveau Artists The two greatest graphic artists of the Art Nouveau movement were the French lithographer
Jules Cheret (1836-1932) whose invention of "3-stone chromolithography" made Art Nouveau poster art
feasible, and the Czech lithographer and designer Alphonse Mucha ( 1860I-1939) whose celebrated posters
epitomized the Art Nouveau idiom. Emile Galle of France and Louis Comfort Tiffany of the United States were
famous for their colorful Art Nouveau glassware, as were the English artists Aubrey Beardsley and Walter
Crane for their wonderful Art Nouveau drawings. Other famous artists involved in the "new art" included: the
French jewelry designer Rene Lalique, the Viennese painter Gustav Klimt. the Polish theatrical designer and
stained-glass artist Stanislaw Wyspianski, and the Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh
(1868-1928), leader of the Glasgow School.
Legacy and Influence of Art Nouveau
While Art Nouveau promoted a more widespread adoption of "beautiful" design, it did not diminish the value
of the machine or mass-production (as the Arts and Crafts Movement did). Instead, it took advantage of many
technological innovations from the late 19th century. Even so, by World War I, it too succumbed to the more
streamlined design processes that were beginning to become available.
Possibly its greatest influence was on (1) 20th-century advocates of integrated design, such as the German
Bauhaus design school and the Dutch design movement De Stijl; and (2) Graphic art such as illustration and
poster-design.
Nowadays, Art Nouveau is viewed as an important bridge between Neoclassicism and modernism, and a
number of its monuments are on the UNESCO World Heritage List, notably the historic center of Riga, Latvia
with over 750 buildings in the Art Nouveau style.
Fauvism
Fauvism is a style of painting that flourished in France around the turn of the 20th century; Fauve artists used
pure, brilliant colors aggressively applied straight from the paint tubes to create a sense of an explosion on the
canvas.
The Fauves painted directly from nature, as the Impressionists had before them, but Fauvist works were
invested with a strong expressive reaction to the subjects portrayed. First formally exhibited in Paris in 1905,
Fauvist paintings shocked visitors to the annual Salon d'Automne; one of these visitors was the critic Louis
Vauxcelles, who, because of the violence of their works, dubbed the painters fauves or “wild beasts.”
The group leader was Henri Matisse, who had arrived at the Fauve style after experimenting with the various
post-Impressionist approaches of Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Georges Woman with the Hat by Henri
Matisse Seurat. Matisse's studies led him to reject traditional renderings of three-dimensional space and to
seek instead a new picture space defined by movement of color. He exhibited his famous Woman with the Hat
(1905) at the 1905 exhibition, In this painting, brisk strokes of color-blues, greens, and reds-form an energetic,
Woman with the Hat by Henri Matisse expressive view of the woman. The crude paint application, which left
areas of raw canvas exposed, was appalling to viewers at the time.
Other Fauvist Painter
The major Fauvists were André Derain, who had attended school with Matisse in 1898- 99, and Maurice de
Vlaminck, who was Derain's friend. They shared Matisse's interest in the expressive function of color in
painting, and they first exhibited together in 1905. Derain's Fauvist paintings translate every tone of a
landscape into pure color, which he applied with short, forceful brushstrokes. The agitated swirls of intense
color in Vlaminck's works are indebted to the expressive power of van Gogh.
For most of these artists, Fauvism was a transitional learning stage. By 1908, a revived interest in Paul
Cézanne's vision of the order and structure of nature had led many of them to reject the turbulent
emotionalism of Fauvism in favor of the logic of Cubism. Matisse alone pursued the course he had pioneered,
achieving a sophisticated balance between his emotions and the world he painted.
Characteristics of Fauvism
The characteristics of Fauvism include a radical use of unnatural colors that separated color from its usual
representational and realistic role, giving new, emotional meaning to the colors; creating a strong, unified
work that appears flat on the canvas; showing individual expressions and emotions of the painter instead of
creating paintings based on theories of what painting should look like with objects represented as they appear
in nature; and bold brush strokes using paint straight from the tube instead of preparing and mixing it
(Encyclopedia Britannica).
Expressionism
Expressionism is an artistic style in which the artist seeks to depict not objective reality but rather the
subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse within a person. The artist accomplishes
this aim through distortion, exaggeration, primitivism, and fantasy and through the vivid, jarring, violent, or
dynamic application of formal elements, In a broader sense Expressionism is one of the main currents of art in
the later 19th and the 20th centuries, and its qualities of highly subjective, personal, spontaneous self-
expression are typical of a wide range of modern artists and art movements, Expressionism can also be seen as
a permanent tendency in Germanic and Nordic art from at least the European Middle Ages, particularly in
times of social change or spiritual crisis, and in this sense it forms the converse of the rationalist and
classicizing tendencies of Italy and later of France.
The term "Expressionism" was coined in 1910 by Czech art historian Antonin Matejcek, who intended it to
denote the opposite of Impressionism. Whereas the Impressionists sought to express the majesty of nature
and the human form through paint, the Expressionists, according to Matejcek, sought only to express inner
life, often via the painting of harsh ard realistic subject matter; it should be noted, however, that neither Die
Brücke, nor similar sub- movements, ever referred to themselves as Expressionist, and, in the early years of
the century, the term was widely used to apply to a variety of styles including Post-Impressionism.
The Advent of Expressionism in Germany
Although it included various artists and styles, Expressionism first emerged in 1905, when a group of four
German architecture students who desired to become painters - Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Fritz Bleyl, Karl
Schmidt-Rotluff, and Erich Heckel formed the group Die Brucke (the Bridge) in the city of Dresden. A few years
later, in 1911, a like-minded group of young artists formed Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) in Munich, after
the rejection of Wassily Kandinsky's painting The Last Judgment (1910) from a local exhibition. In addition to
Kandinsky, the group included Franz Marc, Paul Klee, and August Macke, among others, all of whom made up
the loosely associated group.
Expressionism was a dominant style in Germany immediately following World War I, where it suited the
postwar atmosphere of cynicism, alienation, and disillusionment. Some of the movement's later practitioners,
such as George Grosz and Otto Dix, developed a more pointed, socially critical blend of Expressionism and
Realism known as the Neue Sachlichkeit ("New Objectivity"). As can be seen from such labels as abstract
Expressionism and Neo-Expressionism, the spontaneous, instinctive, and highly emotional qualities of
Expressionism have been shared by several subsequent art movements in the 20th century.
Characteristics of Expressionism
Expressionist art tried to convey emotion and meaning rather than reality. Each artist had his unique way of
"expressing" his feelings in his art. To express emotion, the subjects are often distorted or exaggerated. At the
same time, colors are often vivid and shocking.
Famous Expressionist Artists
1. Max Beckman - A German painter who was against the Expressionist movement. However, many of his
paintings are described as Expressionist.
2. James Ensor -A Dutch painter who had great influence on the expressionist movement in Germany.
3. Oskar Kokoschka - An Austrian artist whose artwork was displayed in the German magazine 'The
Storm' when expressionism became a true art movement.
4. August Macke - A leading member of the expressionist group 'The Blue Rider' in Germany, he also
painted some abstract art.
5. Franz Marc - A founding member of The Blue Rider's group, Franz Marc was one of the leaders in the
Expressionist movement.
6. Edvard Munch - A Symbolist and Expressionist, Munch is best known for his famous painting The
Scream.
7. Egon Schiele - An early adopter of Expressionism, Egon died at 28.
Decline of the Movement
The decline of Expressionism was hastened by the vagueness of its longing for a better world, by its use of
highly poetic language, and in general the intensely personal and inaccessible nature of its mode of
presentation. The partial reestablishment of stability in Germany after 1924 and the growth of more overtly
political styles of social realism hastened the movement's decline in the late 1920s.
Expressionism was definitively killed by the advent of the Nazis to power in 1933 They branded the work of
almost all Expressionists as degenerate and forbade them to exhibit or publish and eventually even to work.
Many Expressionists went into exile in the United States and other countries