Symbolist Art in Context - by Michelle Facos (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The Symbolist art movement of the late nineteenth century forms an important bridge between Impressionism and Modernism. But because Symbolism, more than the two movements it links, emphasizes ideas over objects and events, it has suffered from vague and conflicting definitions. In Symbolist Art in Context, Michelle Facos offers a clearly written, comprehensive, and accessible description of this challenging subject. Reaching back into Romanticism for Symbolism's origins, Facos argues that Symbolism enabled artists (including Munch and Gauguin) to confront an increasingly uncertain and complex world--one to which pessimists responded with themes of decadence and degeneration and optimists with idealism and reform.

Review Quotes

"The book contains a great deal of useful information and will prove a valuable textbook."-- "Burlington Magazine" (1/1/2001 12:00:00 AM)

"This book offers a straightforward definition of Symbolism as the starting point for investigating a complex and imprecisely understood art movement."-- "Nordicum-Mediterraneum" (3/20/2011 12:00:00 AM)

About the Author

Michelle Facos is Associate Professor of Art History at Indiana University, Bloomington. She is the author of Nationalism and the Nordic Imagination: Swedish Painting in the 1890s (UC Press) and coedited (with Sharon Hirsch) Art and the National Identity at the Turn of the Century.