artisandoflove asked: Love this blog, perfect. I post Decadent and Symbolist art from the fin-de-siècle on my art thesis blog, fetishofsilence - please keep blogging these wonderful misunderstood masterpieces.
For me, the only pleasure greater than coming across these artworks that stir the mind & ignite the soul, is being able to pass along those sentiments by simply sharing said images & the stories behind them.
I had the privilege of first studying Symbolism & Decadence, in a superb seminar on everything Belle Epoque France, &, to have gotten to write about Belgian Symbolism. It’s always a welcome surprise to meet others who are familiar with what it’s all about! Thanks for your wonderful feedback. I will definitely take a look at your blog.
To be honest, I was rather stunned that there was no tumblr dedicated exclusively to the subject so, I went ahead and made this one. After all, I agree with you that the bizarrely beautiful work of these transcendental artists should be kept alive.
If there are glaring omissions, or, if you find any pieces that you think should be added to the collection, please do not hesitate to submit them for posting.
Best regards,
Eve
![Léon Spilliaert (1881-1946)
Digue la nuit
1908
Ink wash and watercolour on paper
H. 47,8; W. 39,5 cm
Paris, Musée d’Orsay, kept in the Graphic Arts Department, Musée du Louvre
© ADAGP – Musée d’Orsay, dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt
“Digue la nuit [Dyke at Night]
After a short period at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Bruges between 1899 and 1900, Spilliaert was predominantly self-taught, building a career in his native town of Ostend in Belgium. Born around twenty years after the leading members of the Symbolist generation (the 1860 generation), he nonetheless adopted this aesthetic, and continued with it well after 1900.
He produced a series of still lifes, self-portraits and landscapes, all imbued with a distinctive atmosphere of worrying strangeness. Produced mainly on paper, he used techniques as diverse as pencil, Indian ink, pastel and gouache to explore all the possibilities of black in these works. This choice certainly reveals a certain pessimism (further fuelled by reading Edgar Allan Poe and Nietzsche), but was in harmony with those guardians of Symbolism: Odilon Redon (famous for his Noirs), Eugène Carrière and the American artist Whistler.
Dyke at Night is part of a series of landscapes produced in Ostend around 1908. This work, bordering on abstraction, is emblematic of the mysterious and desolate atmosphere that Spilliaert was so fond of. It has both the quality of silence and abandon, in which Khnopff had specialised before him, as well as the attraction to monochrome that first appeared in Whistler’s famous Nocturnes.
This drawing is remarkable also in its stylisation. Spilliaert removes any hint of characterisation from his landscape: the buildings alongside the dyke at Ostend are rendered as dark, impenetrable masses; as for the vertical reflections from the street lamps, they embody the damp atmosphere of the embankment, an area of transition between land and sea where the elements exchange properties. In this atmosphere of all-pervading liquefaction, spatial reference points are lost. For Spilliaert, faithful in this respect to the spirit of Symbolism, the most important thing is to transfigure the locations, and to make them reflections of a state of mind. Solitude, mystery and hallucination all eat into this landscape.”](http://24.media.tumblr.com/ba96b9743bc35474f43376ddb9d832d6/tumblr_mjsn3497N11qkbmtwo1_r1_500.jpg)
![Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921)
Future or A Young Englishwoman
1898
Marble bust with coloured highlights, crown of brass leaves on a copper wire
H. 45.5; W. 28; D. 20 cm
Paris, Musée d’Orsay
Below is a marvelous description of one of the themes that underlies most of Khnopff’s work: androgyny/undiscernible gender as a representation of ultimate spiritual union of the sexes. A theme that influenced later artists like Jean Cocteau (Les enfants térribles).
“Futur ou Une jeune femme anglaise [Future or A Young Englishwoman]
In 1898, Fernand Khnopff, a Belgium symbolist, was one of the guests of honour at the first Viennese Secession. He submitted sixteen paintings and four sculptures, including this Young Englishwoman, which the critic Ludwig Hevesi described as: “the ideal woman in white marble, tight-lipped… […] highlighted with traces of colour of exquisite finesse. […] The evanescent form harmonises perfectly with this colour treatment. There, too, we sense the sensuality, but Khnopff’s sensuality has something vampirish about it.”
As for certain martyrs, the statue’s skull is sliced across the forehead. Could visitors to the 1898 exhibition see this detail? Hevesi talks about a scarf sprinkled with little blue stars. Some shots show the marble bust wearing a crown of leaves, while the oldest photograph shows the young Englishwoman with neither a scarf nor a crown. These days her forehead is adorned with a laurel wreath.
Although Khnopff gave the bust the features of his sister, Marguerite, to whom he was very close, the marble has the artist’s own pale blue eyes. It may be the expression of a myth which fascinated the symbolist artists: that of the original hermaphrodite mentioned by Plato in The Banquet, a double being whom Zeus sliced in half in a moment of fury. The yearning for love and the desire for fusion were believed to have arisen from this mutilation. Under its misleading title, A Young Englishwoman perhaps expresses Khnopff’s dream to be joined to Marguerite, his adored sister.”](http://24.media.tumblr.com/ef1e4187802bfce384a9bf2e25678515/tumblr_mjsmmavSyD1qkbmtwo1_400.jpg)
