Symbolism (movement)

Symbolism was a special way of making art that began in France and Belgium. It started during the late 1800s as a new way to think about creativity. Most Symbolists were poets, but they also made music and paintings.

Instead of showing the world exactly as it looks, they wanted to show deep truths. They used symbols to represent ideas that are hard to see. This movement was a reaction against styles called naturalism and realism. Those styles tried to show every plain and gritty detail of real life. Symbolists preferred to focus on dreams, imagination, and the spirit.

To create this kind of art, Symbolists used many clever techniques. One famous method was called synesthesia. This is when a writer mixes different senses together. For example, a poet might describe a smell as being like a song. Or they might say a color feels like a certain sound.

They did not want to simply name an object in a poem. They wanted to suggest it so the reader could guess the meaning. This created a sense of mystery and wonder for the person reading or looking. They wanted to show the effect an object has on the soul.

The history of Symbolism reaches back to important writers and thinkers. It began to grow after Charles Baudelaire published his book, Les Fleurs du mal, in 1857.

He was greatly influenced by the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Later, in the 1860s and 1870s, artists like Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine helped develop the style. By the 1880s, many writers were following these new ideas. A critic named Jean Moréas eventually gave the group the name "Symbolists." He wanted to tell them apart from other groups of artists called Decadents.

There are many interesting facts about how this movement worked in different places. In 1886, Jean Moréas published the Symbolist Manifesto in a newspaper called Le Figaro.

This document named Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Verlaine as the three most important poets. The movement also spread to painting all across the Western world. In Paris, a man named Joséphin Péladan helped promote the art. He started the Salon de la Rose + Croix in the 1890s. This was a special place for artists who loved spiritualism and idealism.

Symbolism connects to the way we use language and signs every day. The word comes from the Greek word "symbolon," which was a sign of recognition. In ancient Greece, people used a broken piece of pottery as a symbol.

When two people met, they would fit the two pieces together to show they were allies. Symbolist artists used this same idea of connection in their work. They believed the whole world was a kind of language. They thought that every object could point toward a much bigger, hidden meaning.