Anti-Naturalism, Idealism and Symbolism in French Art Criticism, 1880-1895.

Abstract

The similarities between symbolist art criticism in Paris at the end of the nineteenth century and the conservative criticism of the same period has received little attention, but these two critical stances were closer than has previously been imagined. The purpose of this dissertation is to illuminate the context in which symbolist art criticism appeared and to demonstrate that symbolism was the modernist aspect of a broader movement--anti-naturalism-- and that it manifested both conservative and avant-garde tendencies. The first chapter discusses the essential qualities of anti-naturalism as the dominant feature of intellectual life in Paris during the 1880s and nineties. The second chapter deals with various facets of anti-naturalism: its literary side, its effect on the criticism of painting, its relationship to the revival of Catholicism and idealism, to political conservatism, and the reaction against positivism. Throughout, examples of both conservative and progressive anti-naturalism are compared to demonstrate the fundamental similarity between modernist and reactionary critical camps. The third chapter examines the writings of Felix Feneon, a central figure in symbolist art criticism. Feneon staunchly defended modernist principles against what he saw as an incursion of reactionary ideas in the visual arts. His antipathy toward J. -K. Huysmans and the decadents and his sharp criticism of the art of Paul Gauguin formed the core of his defense of modernism. Albert Aurier, the subject of the fourth chapter, was in many ways Feneon's opposite in avant-garde circles. Aurier developed from artistically conservative beginnings among the decadents--the very group that Feneon fought against--to become a major spokesman for symbolism in painting. Various traditionalist leanings in Aurier's criticism make his work an interesting counterpoint to Feneon's fierce modernism. The fifth chapter deals with two highly conservative critics, Camille Mauclair and Alphonse Germain, both of whom began in progressive symbolist circles but turned increasingly reactionary during the 1890s. Their criticism is indicative of the general conservative thinking that had invaded symbolist thought by that time.