Original subtitles

The artists in our lecture today didn't invent the concept of symbolism. Writers, artists,

and poets throughout the world have been using symbols for centuries. But during the post-Impressionist

period, symbolism refers to a specific movement where artists wanted to paint bigger truths

through symbols and metaphors. It was a reaction to the realist movement of the early 19th century,

which had been all about painting life as accurately as possible, which in turn had been

a reaction to Romanticism, which was all about feelings and emotions. As we discussed, movements

in art history are sometimes a bit of a pendulum swinging back and forth with each new generation,

rejecting what the previous one was doing. The movement gets its start in literature.

Jean Maurier wrote its manifesto in 1886, citing the influences of the writers Charles Baudelaire,

Stéphane Mayorme, and Paul Verlaine. The manifesto stated,

Thus in this art movement, representations of nature, human activities, and all real-life events

don't stand on their own. They are rather veiled reflections of the senses pointing to the archetypal

meanings through their esoteric connections. In much simpler terms, Mayorme sums up it rather

succinctly when he writes to a friend, to depict not the thing, but the effect it produces.

The driving force for these symbolists was their disenchantment with modern society.

The Industrial Age hadn't suddenly fixed all the world's ills. In many ways, it had just created new,

and maybe even worse problems. The cold, hard steel of the Machine Age was soul-crushing. What light was

left of the human spirit in the long shadows of smokestacks, poverty, and disease? Where was the

divine and spiritual in our science- and technology-obsessed world? The symbolists were fighting

against the grim reality of the Industrial Age to rediscover our humanity. Dreams were a particularly

important motif for the symbolists because only in our dreams can we be truly free from the stifling

realities of modern life. And the growing field of psychoanalysis had everyone obsessing over the

meaning of their dreams. Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung both popularized the theory of our unconscious mind

and how dreams often revealed hidden truths about the individual and the world around them.

Edward von Hartmann writes a book called The Philosophy of the Unconscious, which argues that art should

penetrate our unconscious to better understand ourselves. So, writers and painters alike sought to use color,

emotion, and metaphor to show the inner life of the individual and the concealed aspects of our world.

They were exploring the relationship between the physical world and our ephemeral thoughts to uncover deeper truths.

And not all dreams are good dreams. Some are nightmares. Fear is a raw and powerful theme in symbolist

art. Fear of death, disease, loss, and pain, which are all around you. It's also a very primal driver of

human behavior. Fear is an unconscious response, the basis of our psyche. The symbolists love painting dark,

moody night scenes or fantastic horrors and evil creatures, activating that fundamental fear response

lying just below the surface. Love and sex are another big theme for symbolists. They also sought respite

in a lover's embrace, or at least depictions of it. In fact, they're preoccupied with the taboo,

perversion, temptation, sin, Satan. These are the perfect impetus for the symbolists, the allure of the

female form and the struggle between lust and propriety gets these guys going, literally and figuratively.

Symbolism really shows how art can contribute to big philosophical debates. Because in the 18th

and 19th centuries, philosophers like Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill had started to describe humans as

ultra-rational beings whose behavior could be predicted by self-interest. In their eyes, people were just

driven to make the most riches, power, and comfort for themselves through the least amount of effort.

And so, with this assumption under their belt, new disciplines like economics started making all

sorts of clever models on how to maximize productivity and set prices and wages based on the idea that

humans were all very predictable and rational. But the symbolists are like, no way! Humans aren't just

robots, dreams, fears, love, beliefs, desires. These are the big things that really drive our behavior.

And they are definitely not always rational or predictable. Science and reason can't explain

everything about us. Now, symbolism doesn't necessarily mean everything depicted is a symbol.

You'll actually be missing the big picture if you're just searching for the hidden meaning behind every

little thing. Ironically, having a symbolic meaning behind every detail in a painting was

more of the classical, academic way, and they had an established set of symbols and colors that

served as metaphors for morals and ideas. The new symbolists rejected these tired and

emotionally detached depictions. They wanted to create new worlds—worlds that no one had seen before,

full of wonder that could take their viewers on a spiritual and emotional journey.

As I mentioned, it was mostly the poets who got symbolism going. They wanted to loosen the grip

that the structured verse had on poetry. They were sympathetic to the free-verse movement

and advocated for poems with more fluidity. Tear down the established traditions to allow for more

natural expression. Baudelaire wrote about alienation and disconnection from modern society.

Les Fleurs de Mal, or The Flowers of Evil, may be Baudelaire's most famous work. It includes graphic

depictions of sex and drug use. Baudelaire even wrote a poem about the magnificence of a rotting corpse.

Baudelaire enlisted the help of Felician Rops to illustrate the cover of Les Epaves. It's astonishing to

me that this was made in 1866. At a quick glance, I would guess it was made for a punk album in 1991.

The symbolists unleashed a wide world of dark and troubling art that had never been seen before.

Lots of familiar names of the post-impressionist era were inspired and in some ways part of the

symbolist movement. Paul Gauguin, Odilon Redon, Edvard Munch, and so on. But I give them their

due in other lectures. In this lecture, I want to go off the beaten path a little, just over the border

to Belgium, and hopefully introduce you to some artists you're less familiar with. I'm not sure what

was in the air, but some of the most fascinating symbolist art was being made in Belgium during this

time. The most widely known of this group would have to be James Ensor. But even then,

he's still not a household name. We'll also look at some other fascinating artists like

Fernand Knopf, Evelyn de Morgan, and Felician Rops. James Ensor was born in Belgium to an English

father and a Belgian mother. As a child, James wasn't interested in school. He wanted to paint. He left

school at 15 to study with two local artists. Eventually, after he spent a few years learning

the fundamentals, he went to Academy Royal de Beaux Arts in Brussels. James started out the way many

of our painters do, with dark and dull colors, mostly earth tones, massive browns and grays. This subtle,

tonal painting was really the only style taught in school. In this painting, called Afternoon in Ostend,

it is still a very beautiful and emotive scene, but compared to what he will do,

this is shockingly tame and kind of boring. It only takes a few years, though, before James is

painting in a radically different way. As he became exposed to emerging styles in Paris, Ensor began

to get more and more bold, and he wanted to make paintings that would be shocking, troubling, and

controversial. In this painting, what is usually a pretty tame subject matter, a still life, Ensor starts

out normal enough on the bottom with a table, a palette, a little figure, and some plates. His

family owned a souvenir shop that sold masks, but as you can see, James took these theatrical masks

and really went to town. He turns them into some sort of psychotic nightmare. Three floating faces on

the right, hovering in a field of bright green, opposite an even more disturbing collection of faces

and masks, mashed up and fusing together in a glowing yellow field. I'm reminded of Brian Usna's 1989

horror classic, Society, when I see this. And like any good horror movie director, Ensor is looking to

unsettle his viewer and use his art to trigger their own primal fears. Ensor was quite experimental with

his painting style as well. Here in the theater of masks, we see him using layers and layers and

layers of semi-transparent paint, building up and scraping away, creating some sort of glowing force

field? I'm not sure, but we can make out two figures encountering each other in the orb. One looks like a

soldier and the other a clown. There's also some sort of jester on the bottom, looking more like a red

demon type of creature, turning his menacing face towards us, breaking the fourth wall, appropriate

for a mask scene. This next piece is really wild. It's based on a bizarre short story by Edgar Allan Poe

from 1849. The story goes like this. There's a court jester named Hopfrog, and he's had enough with the

king and his seven ministers, who routinely humiliate him. So Hopfrog devises a plan. Knowing the king's

penchant for practical jokes, Hopfrog says to the king, wouldn't it be hilarious if you and the seven

ministers dressed up like orangutans during the grand ball? They all think it's a great idea and proceed

to make costumes out of tar and flax and chained together to pretend they're wild beasts in front

of the guests. To give the crowd a better look, Hopfrog uses a pulley to hoist them up before the crowd.

Ensor illustrates the final scene when the king and his ministers are then set on fire by Hopfrog as his

act of revenge, much to the surprise, horror, and delight of the absolutely massive crowd of party

goers. Ensor signs his name on the sash of the figure bottom center. James was not afraid to take

on the power structures at the time, the ruling class, the government, and religion as well.

James increasingly focuses on Christianity and the hypocrisy and evil he saw in the church.

Here we have this painting of Jesus portrayed like no one had ever seen. Far removed from the sweet,

gentle, and smooth-skinned man of perfection most were used to seeing in church.

Okay, I can't help it. I absolutely love this next painting. It's such a bright, beautiful gold,

blue, pink, and white painting. We see a traditional salon-style assortment of wall-to-wall paintings,

but all is not well. Apparently, the painter is dead, and that doesn't normally happen. As a painter,

I can totally relate to this feeling, though. Curiously, his easel has no canvas on it,

or maybe it's just really small. And there are other interesting details throughout, like skulls

sprinkled around, and this very odd half-of-a-face poking up from the bottom. Is this the model he's

painting? Is she being attacked by this skeleton in the corner? I have so many questions.

We saw James' most ambitious piece briefly in a previous lecture, where he painted a giant canvas,

8 feet tall and 14 feet long, and included hundreds, if not thousands, of people in a wild

and chaotic composition. This is a painting of Christ returning to Brussels and being ushered

into town with a parade. Thousands are jammed together, each with bizarre and funny faces.

Many you can't tell if they're a mask or a real person. Every face a different variation of the color

pink. The paint is heaped on in many areas with thick strokes and chunky gestures. This is far from an

elegant painting. Oddly, but purposefully, Christ is not at the center of the composition. Instead,

he's lost in the crowd. He's tiny. Most people are too caught up in the festivities to care or notice

who it's all for. Ensor is essentially mocking everyone in town, priests, politicians, dignitaries,

military. No one is spared from looking ridiculous. It must have been overwhelming and over-stimulating

to stand in front of this piece, as Ensor probably wanted. Let's now look at one of his fellow Belgians,

Fernand Edmond Jean-Marie Knopf, who was born in 1858. Knopf was from a wealthy bourgeois family that

went back generations. He went to law school to appease his parents, as so many of these young

painters did. But then he got into poetry and started reading Baudelaire and Flaubert. That's a

slippery slope right there. Soon he was hooked and wanted to read more stories and see more pictures of

the dark and seedy underbelly of humanity that he'd been sheltered from in his comfortable upbringing.

He decides he wants to create art like this and enrolls at the Academy Royal de Beaux-Arts in

Brussels. And he starts traveling to Paris, becoming familiar with artists like Eugene Delacroix and

Gustave Moreau. Like many of his contemporaries, Fernand starts off painting rather conservatively,

although in a much different style than James. He had a more traditional style, smoother, more blended,

more precise. He was obviously very talented, but this painting of Marguerite Knopf doesn't seem to be

saying anything beyond, look at this beautiful painting of this beautiful woman. There doesn't

seem to be a lot of emotional or psychological content. But like Ensor, Fernand became inspired by a

wider variety of art that was happening in France and around Europe. He started to let go of a strict

observational painting process. He began to combine unexpected imagery, creating unexpected compositions.

This painting's title is taken from a poem by Christina Rossetti, I Lock My Door Upon Myself. It's

provocative and invites us into this woman's space to see what secrets she's keeping. He's beginning to

stylize his figures, who seemed to invite psychological interpretation. The lilies popping up in front were

meant to be symbols of purity, and the arrow on the table a symbol of love or pain. He constructs a bizarre,

spaceless background pinned between the wall and the table. He's using multiple textures from multiple

walls and surfaces, and he conjures a flat, abstract, geometric composition, but made from a variety of

convincing wood and aged textures. Gustav Klimt was an earlier admirer of Knopf's work and took inspiration

from pieces like this one. It's interesting to see how Klimt took inspiration from Knopf's flat, geometric

backgrounds and took them in an entirely different direction. We can see here another common theme for

Knopf, this marble sculpture head with a blue wing on the side. He became very interested in the idea of a

chimera, a being composed of different animal parts. Combining two things or creatures that don't belong

together is a great way of invoking new ideas and concepts in the viewer's mind. He takes the chimera idea

to a new level with this bizarre and unsettling painting called the Caresses or the Sphinx. This woman has the

body of a cheetah, a large and dangerous animal that looks poised and ready to shred this boy to ribbons,

should the situation arise. His message seems to be, women are dangerous. Knopf would continue to

experiment and push the boundaries of his compositions and stylizations. He would zoom way in and bring his

subjects head up so close that they took up half the canvas and went off the edges. This is hyper

intimacy, bringing the viewer face to face with these women. Here he's looking more and more similar to

Gustav Klimt, and it's easy now to see the influence Knopf had on Klimt. This painting is called Who Shall

Deliver Me, a provocative title that engages the viewer to ask what is wrong? Who or what does she

need rescuing from? We'll finish up Fernand Knopf with another chimera painting with a mind-bending scale

shift from the giant ghost-like woman in the back, who looks like she may be reprising her role from the

previous painting. But her legs extend through the water-like floor, atop which stands a very tiny,

muscular dog with a human head. Knopf is using very thin layers of paint, creating an ethereal,

ghost-like scene. This creates a strong focal point in the very dark brown, detailed body of this doggy

chimera. What do all these works mean? Unlike Ensor, whose paintings have a very clear sense of the

emotions they're meant to evoke or the ideas behind the symbols, with Knopf it's difficult to say. Many of

his works are open-ended and invite personal responses, evoking our own memories, dreams, and

imagination. Ensor is aggressive with his messages and emotional overtones, but Knopf is content letting

his viewers draw their own conclusions. Now, I want to turn to a rare example of a female English artist in

this period. Her name was Evelyn de Morgan, born Mary Evelyn Pickering in 1855, and she's just too

interesting to pass up. Evelyn is a good example of how hard it is to classify artists. In a strict

technical sense, she's not a post-impressionist at all. English art in this period drew from different

traditions and was going in quite different directions to what was happening on the continent.

And yet, she's definitely a symbolist and, as a rare female artist in this period, has the unique

perspectives that her paintings present to the world. Evelyn was more fortunate than most female

artists, though, as she was able to attend the Slade School of Fine Art in London, which had just

begun to admit women. There, she was a very talented and successful student. She was able to learn and

master the traditional techniques that they were recreating from Renaissance paintings. She went by her

middle name, Evelyn, as that was still used as a man's name in this period, and it helped her at least

get her foot in the door without being dismissed outright. Unlike many of her colleagues and nearly

all the post-impressionists, she never experimented with Impressionism or Divisionism or any of the other

trends that are sweeping the continent. Instead, she utilized her very classical training to create new

symbols and new narratives. Other English artists would do this, too, creating a very Renaissance-looking

style that was called Pre-Raphaelite. For example, let's look at this painting, entitled The Kingdom

of Heaven Suffereth Violence and the Violent Take It by Force. Here we see a procession towards heaven,

with her protagonists identified by different colored robes. Some are losing their way, and through the

mists of darkness, the colors are grayer and more muted at the bottom. As one ascends to the spiritual

heights at the top, they're whisked away with the angels in their glowing white robes and choirs.

This next painting is called The Storm Spirits. Is anyone getting 1970s or 80s stadium rock vibes from

this one? I could easily see this painted on the hood of a black 1978 Trans Am. The Storm Spirits are

seen here, controlling the water, wind, and lightning. Their huge, billowing robes intermingling with the

clouds and their giant wings. My favorite is the lightning spirit. Not only does she have insanely

bright and rich pink wings, but her lightning is also like delicate gold jewelry, thin and intricate.

It's fascinating to see the way that these women are portrayed as much more powerful than the forces

they are guiding. This, to me, seems like an ultimate feminist painting, women shown as strong,

powerful, all while looking cool. You've probably noticed by now that mythology is very popular with

the symbolists. And that's partly because myths and legends, just like biblical stories, often provide

powerful symbols or cautionary tales for the human condition. Eve in the Apple of the Garden of Eden

is a timeless way to represent curiosity and temptation as a human flaw. And a painting of Pandora

in her box suggests exactly the same kind of deeper truth about ourselves we're supposed to reflect on.

In what may be my favorite Evelyn de Morgan painting, Sleeping Earth and Wakening Moon,

she ditches the robes and wings for a stark rock landscape and a giant glowing orb. The woman on the

rocks or the earth shields her face from the supernatural force of the moon as the other figure in the light

bubble moon descends upon her. Her hair appears to trail out of the sphere, morphing into a plume of clouds,

as though her hair was the energy source of the orb's movement. This looks strongly inspired by William Blake,

but yet from a feminist perspective. All of Evelyn de Morgan's paintings pass the Bechdel test,

as these powerful women all have intense and complex interactions without a man in sight.

And finally, let's come back to Felician Rops, who made people sit up and take notice by doing

illustrations for the symbolist poets. If you're American, you probably have never heard of Rops,

but in Belgium, they have an entire museum dedicated to him. He was a controversial figure for sure,

and perhaps that's the reason we don't know him in the U.S. He may be too much for America's

puritanical culture. Felician Rops is kind of similar to James Ensor. He was a contrarian,

and he took delight in upsetting people, especially the stuffy and the prudish, the religious,

and anyone else he saw as part of the establishment. Felician Rops stirred many controversies with his

work, and you'll see why. Felician Rops reminds me of an Ozzy Osbourne type of character,

an artist who has a great time dressing up like a devil just to freak out the squares and have a laugh.

Rops' favorite theme was blasphemy, and he was quite clever at finding new ways of flipping

religious narratives around for his own devices. Rops would frequently suggest himself as satanic

through his self-portraits. He would often exaggerate his features to give himself a large head narrowing

to a triangular point on the chin, a long pointy nose, a devious goatee, and a villain's mustache.

Rops was really just into Satan generally, though. I mean, if you want a powerful character,

guaranteed to get a rise out of the viewer, you can't do much better than Satan. Especially when

he's flinging live humans from his satchel over a city like a farmer sows his seeds. This 50-foot

Satan-slash-Johnny Appleseed crossover character is terrifying, fascinating, and hilarious. His flamboyant

hat and billowing a robe would be fitting for a day at the Kentucky Derby. In this piece, called

Incantation, we see a wizard character seated with a massive book, all his spells and potions crowded

around him. The incantation appears to be a success, and this fantastic demon woman breaks through the

mirror as she begins to spread her demon wings and demon tail. In another blasphemous work that would be

sure to incense the church, Rops takes the familiar theme of the temptation of Saint Anthony of Egypt

and offends as many as he can. We don't even see Anthony. All we see is his seductress, who appears

to be a scantily clad, crucified sex worker. Her shawl is spread out similar to the demon wings we see in

his previous work. Gustav Guiches commissioned Rops to illustrate the cover of his third book,

La Padure de Sodom, or The Modesty of Sodom. Sodom is the perfect topic for Rops, and here we have what

appears to be another sex worker. She's shielding the genitals of the statue of a male god. Meanwhile,

we see her eye mask is down around her butt, coyly waving a fan next to it, drawing all of our attention

right there. It's quite funny, clever, and irreverent. His most famous painting of all has the hilarious

title Pornocrates and features, you guessed it, a sex worker. She's dressed in a hat, blindfolded,

and with black gloves, long black stockings, and high heels. Quite a few accessories for an otherwise

naked person. There are three putti fluttering about, but really what is going on here I cannot

tell you and your guess is as good as mine. There are some intriguing small features that almost make

the painting a guessing game. Why does the pig have a golden tail, for example? He may not have been

entirely clear in his message, but he was certainly provocative. Even though Rops hung out in the most

avant-garde of artistic circles, paintings like this one still managed to shock his bohemian friends

a bit. Whatever he was doing, it was way ahead of his time. Felician Rops was a bold artist who

wasn't afraid to challenge societal norms about the most taboo of topics, and he did it with incredible

skill, cleverness, and a sense of humor. Symbolism was an international movement. Even though the Belgians

and the French dominate the history books, you can find prominent symbolist artists working in Russia,

Romania, Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, and even as far as Brazil in this period.

And allegorical and symbolic art continues to be popular today. Symbolism's enduring popularity,

and the fact that their works are still fascinating and provocative today, show how successful they

were, uncovering deeper truths about humanity.