Grade 10 Art - Day 71: "A Final Exploration of Artistic Conventions: Symbolism"

The symbolist movement had a strong rooting in both literature and visual art.  To fully explain the differences between the two, let me define what it meant to both:

Symbolism in Literature: Generally speaking, some persons or objects may have more than one meaning when introduced in a text.  It may be something as simple as a man dressed in black, and we immediately imagine that he may be a villain because of the associations this colour brings.  A graffito skull at the beginning of a dark alley might cause you to want your favourite character not to enter that dangerous place!

Symbolism in Art: Symbolism as a movement in art is quite the opposite of other movements that we have studied.  Where impressionism paints a realistic "impression" on the canvas, and naturalism paints realistic subjects in their natural surroundings, Symbolist artists "suggested ideas through symbols and emphasized the meaning behind the forms, lines, shapes, and colors. The works of some 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." (http://www.theartstory.org/)

Take a look at James Ensor's "Death and the Masks", painted in 1897 (above). Here is an analysis from artstory.org:

Artwork description & Analysis: Ensor imparts lifelike qualities to the skull of Death in the center, with its chilling grin, and to the masks of the people; the mask becomes the face, and yet it is still a mask that tries to cover up the spiritual hollowness of the bourgeoisie and the decadence of the times. The crowded composition suggests that this is a pervasive problem and that the painting is the artist's critique of contemporary society. Ensor had an interest in masks because his mother owned a souvenir shop selling such articles as these papier mache masks worn at carnival time in Belgium. Ensor desired a return to the "pure and natural" local carnivals and festivals of his native Belgium with a view toward creating cultural unity, but realized that tourism, commercialization, and industrialization would prevent that from happening.
Moreover, Ensor was heir to the whole Northern tradition of caricature, the grotesque, and fantasy, as seen in the work of Hieronymus Bosch and even Pieter Bruegel. But as opposed to the naturalistic underpinnings of the work of Bosch and Bruegel, Ensor works with a light, bright palette that suggests whimsy and absurdity at the same time that he employs a rough and textural application of paint, which signals the depth and horror of the malaise of the times. Thus, Ensor's contribution to Symbolism was that before the Expressionists of the early twentieth century, he called upon raw color and savage texture to strip down to the layers of the human psyche, plumbing its depths -- in addition to supplementing his Symbolic vocabulary with subtle political overtones.