WHAT'S SYMBOLISM? |
SYMBOLISM is an art direction, which is reflected in fine art, literature and music. It appeared in 1870 and 1880s in France, and later spread to Belgium, Norway and the Russian Empire. It reached its peak of popularity at the turn of the twentieth century. Symbolism characteristics include sadness, introspection, and allusion or as if the author or a painter has come to a quiet desperation, but was too shy to talk about these feelings, so he/she/they painted them. To understand the essence of style, it is necessary to recall a well-known fictional character - for example, the devil. Everyone knows who he is and what it represents. The demon is associated with fears, hell and any type of a demonic deity. It's a character that exists in the collective memory and causes a set of negative emotions. In many ways, the symbolism overlaps with modernity. The fundamental stance in Symbolism is that it has clear rules and a distinct feature vs. Modernism. Modernism is just a broad concept. With Modernism, there was a drive to see, the Symbolism was wrapped around the notion of feeling. Without the doubt Symbolism has more metaphors and symbolism as its foundation to represent a feeling or an event in an artwork. From what I have read, this style has developed using the collective knowledge over the entire history of a mankind based on recognized and accepted symbols. For example, a halo on an icon is a symbol of holiness; a dove is a symbol of peace. I believe Leon Trotsky said “The desire to forget, to be beyond good and evil.”
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RUSSIAN SYMBOLISM |
Symbolism in Russia only lasted for nine years, after which the movement had begun to decline. Futurism and Acmeism ceased the moment of the early 20th century. From what I have read I noticed that there is a strong drive not to be attached to the preceding. It feels as if for a short time, the art movement went back into the Renaissance style. Angels in Byzantine, Gothic, and early Renaissance art represented messengers. Symbolism movement was very important period and has affected personally because growing up in Russia, most of the literature I read and studied in school was from 18th through 20th centuries. Russia in 19th and 20th centuries was “locked” in a revolution of diversity of artistic thinking, perception of art as a way of knowledge, sharpening of religious and philosophical perspectives. The biggest change in the Russian art occurred within the philosophy and approach of Russian artists towards Russian art itself. If prior to mid-19th century after Napoleonic war, Russian artists were admiring foreign art styles, Russian artists slowly moved towards developing Russian art and capitalized on the rise of a Russian national spirit and genre painting. With Tsar Alexander’s II succession to the throne fter his father’s death in 1955, internal political changes swept the Russian Empire: for example, serfs gained freedom. Tsar Alexander II was known as Alexander the Liberator. Russian symbolism was intertwined with Russian literature, painting and music. Since I was raised on reading 18th and 19th century Russian literature, I have found the painting by Mikhael Vrubel the Seated Demon to be fascinating and it sparked my curiosity towards my quest finding any connections between Vrubel and Russian poet, Mikhail Lermontov. The poem Demon starts with “A Demon, soul of all the banished, sadly above the sinful world floated, and thoughts of days now vanished before him crowingly unfurled...”
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Mikhael Vrubel |
WHEN a viewer looks the Demon, the Demon in the painting the Seated Demon in the Garden is posed like a boulder, and his figure, as if it is a continuation of the rock. His hands were helplessly exhausted in their gesture; they were posed as if they were compressed and uneasy. The Demon’s big eyes expressed longing. ArtinRussia website describes the painting as “He appears passive and introverted yet proud, solitary, and sensitive. He is the antithesis of the feminine, yet possesses feminine attributes in the long hair, soft face, and pouty mouth. “I’d like to push an envelope and state that in my opinion the hero wants to overcome internal doubt, find the strength to fight evil; Vrubel’s Demon expresses only the hopelessness, disappointment, frustration, fatigue, and a “man” with a broken will. In this picture, there is a tendency to instrumentality. That is mirrored across the Symbolism movement. Just like in Hugo Simberg’s painting Wounded Angel, we see the same somber theme it resembles a frieze designed for wall decoration. The painting of the Demon Vrubel portrays the Demon as an uncertain and unsolved being, and can be interpreted in different interpretations of the infinite. The main focus in this painting is the actual act of Vrubel’s quest to express symbolic imagery and its plastic expression in painting to convey the idea of a daring challenge to the world and rush the person to freedom.
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Symbolism Art Movement in Finnish art |
FINNISH SYMBOLISM movement was largely inspired by the Finnish Freedom movement that lasted from mid 19th century well into 20th. Even though after the declaration of independence from the Russian empire, Finnish art and culture continues to develop. The Wounded Angel is a national treasure.
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HUGO SIMBERG
WOUNDED ANGEL
YEAR: 1903 TYPE: OIL DIMENSIONS: 127 CM × 154 CM (50 IN × 61 IN) LOCATION: ATENEUM, HELSINKI |
UNLIKE VRUBEL'S Seated Demon in a Garden, Hugo Simberg’s painting Wounded Angel played a significant role in the recognition of it as a significant phenomenon in the Finnish painting. After suffering a serious nervous breakdown in autumn of 1902 and a recovery in spring of 1903, Hugo Simberg painted Wounded Angel almost immediately after leaving a hospital. The composition of the Wounded Angel is simple: the road in the foreground, the shore, the water and the opposite shore and horizontal elements. The boys take almost the entire height of the picture, which gives the figure of an angel a focal point.
MOST OF SIMBERG'S works have a melancholic atmosphere. He as a realist painter but he is well known for Symbolism paintings. The painting Wounded Angel depicts two teenage boys carrying Angel with bandaged eyes and a bleeding wing on the stretcher. One of the boys gazes directly at the viewer with somewhat mysterious look in his eyes. It’s very unclear what the boy is thinking or feeling. I am thinking that the boy felt an unemotional sympathy towards Angel. Landscape is taken from a park in Helsinki, which still exists. In the autumn, the landscape in Finland is harsh and sad just like in the painting therefore the color palette of the picture is muted. It’s near a quiet valley near the water. The background of this sad procession is a quiet valley near the water. The base of the painting is a dirty road. Along the road grow white flowers that resemble those in the hands of an angel holding. In the middle of the picture - a marshy flood plain crossed by a narrow creek. Background picture of the water and empty the opposite shore. At the top there is a thin strip of sky. |