Nature’s Experiments and the Search for Symbolist Form
Seiten
2018
Pennsylvania State University Press (Verlag)
978-0-271-07675-1 (ISBN)
Pennsylvania State University Press (Verlag)
978-0-271-07675-1 (ISBN)
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Examines the influence of experimental science, concerned with the workings of the body, the mind, and their various pathologies, on the works of late nineteenth-century artists Maurice Denis, Édouard Vuillard, August Strindberg, and Edvard Munch.
This provocative study argues that some of the most inventive artwork of the 1890s was strongly influenced by the methods of experimental science and ultimately foreshadowed twentieth-century modernist practices.
Looking at avant-garde figures such as Maurice Denis, Édouard Vuillard, August Strindberg, and Edvard Munch, Allison Morehead considers the conjunction of art making and experimentalism to illuminate how artists echoed the spirit of an increasingly explorative scientific culture in their work and processes. She shows how the concept of “nature’s experiments”—the belief that the study of pathologies led to an understanding of scientific truths, above all about the human mind and body—extended from the scientific realm into the world of art, underpinned artists’ solutions to the problem of symbolist form, and provided a ready-made methodology for fin-de-siècle truth seekers. By using experimental methods to transform symbolist theories into visual form, these artists broke from naturalist modes and interrogated concepts such as deformation, automatism, the arabesque, and madness to create modern works that were radically and usefully strange.
Focusing on the scientific, psychological, and experimental tactics of symbolism, Nature’s Experiments and the Search for Symbolist Form demystifies the avant-garde value of experimentation and reveals new and important insights into a foundational period for the development of European modernism.
This provocative study argues that some of the most inventive artwork of the 1890s was strongly influenced by the methods of experimental science and ultimately foreshadowed twentieth-century modernist practices.
Looking at avant-garde figures such as Maurice Denis, Édouard Vuillard, August Strindberg, and Edvard Munch, Allison Morehead considers the conjunction of art making and experimentalism to illuminate how artists echoed the spirit of an increasingly explorative scientific culture in their work and processes. She shows how the concept of “nature’s experiments”—the belief that the study of pathologies led to an understanding of scientific truths, above all about the human mind and body—extended from the scientific realm into the world of art, underpinned artists’ solutions to the problem of symbolist form, and provided a ready-made methodology for fin-de-siècle truth seekers. By using experimental methods to transform symbolist theories into visual form, these artists broke from naturalist modes and interrogated concepts such as deformation, automatism, the arabesque, and madness to create modern works that were radically and usefully strange.
Focusing on the scientific, psychological, and experimental tactics of symbolism, Nature’s Experiments and the Search for Symbolist Form demystifies the avant-garde value of experimentation and reveals new and important insights into a foundational period for the development of European modernism.
Allison Morehead is Associate Professor of Art History and Cultural Studies at Queen’s University.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Symbolism and Nature’s Experiments
1Toward an Experimental Symbolism: Ideas and Ideals
2Defending Deformation: Maurice Denis’s Positivist Modernism
3Édouard Vuillard’s Experimental Arabesques
4August Strindberg’s Naturalistic Symbolism
5Madness as Method: The Pathological Experiments of Edvard Munch
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
| Erscheinungsdatum | 17.01.2019 |
|---|---|
| Reihe/Serie | Refiguring Modernism |
| Zusatzinfo | 51 Halftones, color; 60 Halftones, black and white |
| Verlagsort | University Park |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 229 x 241 mm |
| Gewicht | 1089 g |
| Themenwelt | Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Kunstgeschichte / Kunststile |
| Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Malerei / Plastik | |
| ISBN-10 | 0-271-07675-5 / 0271076755 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0-271-07675-1 / 9780271076751 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
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