Symbolism in Art

Course Summary

This course will introduce you to the artistic culture of the fin-de-siecle, the final decades of the nineteenth century. At this time, artists and designers responded in various creative ways to profound upheavals in industrialised mass culture and society that deprived modernity of some sense of sacredness. The course will explore how Symbolism and Art Nouveau appeared, espeically in France and Belgium, introducing different styles that sought to express escape from reality through imagination, decadence, ancient myth, legend and religion, via such states as dream, nightmare, hysteria, impulse, anxiety, alienation, all of which were under close scrutiny by science and medicine.

Art historian Dr Roberta Crisci-Richardson will guide you through this period of revolutionary impact on cultural development.