Article révisé par les pairs
| Résumé : | Since a few years, the number of studies devoted to occultism and esotericism is increasing in the humanities. Nevertheless, the relationship between occultism and painting has been rarely investigated, even though it is known that many artistic movements, such as Romantism or Surrealism, have been deeply influenced by occultist thought. This paper attempts to investigate the occultist influence upon one of the most important artistic movement of the 19th century, Symbolism, focusing especially on Belgian Symbolism. This study is partly inspired by a number of recent publications that do demonstrate the closeness between these two movements, but without discussing their actual historical connections. A historical approach, however, allows us a new perspective on symbolist painting, which has too often been presented merely as reflecting a mysterious aesthetic (not really for scholarly reasons, but rather because only few authors have tried to understand its stylistic background and sources of influence). A systematic study of the connections between occultism and Belgian symbolism proves to be fruitful in several respects. It can be demonstrated that Symbolism was the concrete medium of expression of the occultist revival of the late 19th century; a revival which, without Symbolist painting, would probably not have had the same scale. Discreet by nature, occultism found in painting a proper medium to embody its ideas and theories. Reversely, Symbolism found in occultism a source of icono-graphic themes, subjects or patterns; and it can be demonstrated that occultism contributed in a very concrete manner to the elaboration of the symbolist style. Thus, this article purports to throw new light on the occultist revival of the late 19th century, and to make possible an investigation of the emergence of Symbolist aesthetics. © Koninklijke Brill N V, Leiden, 2002. |
