Symbolism / Art Nouveau

The 1880s and 1890s saw a wave of painters across Europe turn away from both realist observation and Impressionist sensation and ask, instead, what painting could do if it aspired to the condition of music — evoking feeling, mood and metaphysical states rather than describing visible reality. Symbolism (in painting, Moreau, Puvis de Chavannes, Redon, Klimt, Stuck) turned to myth, dream and erotic allegory; the Belgian poet Émile Verhaeren coined the term in 1886, and the tendency was as much literary as painterly. In parallel, Art Nouveau (called Jugendstil in Germany and Austria, Modernisme in Catalonia) swept through the decorative and applied arts — Mucha's poster designs, Gaudí's architecture, Klimt's gold-leaf canvases — with a shared grammar of sinuous organic line, flowing feminine hair, and ornamental flatness derived in part from Japanese woodblock prints. Klimt stands at the intersection of both tendencies, as does the early Edvard Munch.

How to recognise it

Sinuous, flowing line — what the French called the "whiplash" curve — runs through Art Nouveau in every medium. In painting, look for elongated, attenuated figures, often female, with cascading hair that merges with decorative pattern. Gold and flat ornamental areas appear in Klimt's work almost as if embroidered or enamelled. Symbolist paintings are frequently dreamlike or mythological in subject: sphinxes, mermaids, femmes fatales, the personified Death. Colour tends toward rich jewel tones — deep purples, golds, greens — or a sombre, melancholy palette in northern Symbolism (Munch, Spilliaert). If the painting seems to be about a state of feeling rather than a describable event, and if its surface design draws as much attention as its narrative, you are in Symbolist/Art Nouveau territory.