The Symbolist Vision

“Symbolists are visionaries who reveal alternate realities and seek out the inner mystique otherwise obscured by the mundane,” says the opening statement for the catalog The Symbolist Vision, edited by Stephanie Hackett.

Yes, indeed, and there is nothing at all mundane in this exhibition of strangely-oriented faces and staring eyes. I was mesmerized by two totally new-to-me pieces: one by Schlüter, of the Austrian school, with a whopping skull, a candle, a watch, two books (whose titles are, of course, indecipherable), and a few other tools/signs weighted with symbolic mood. (De la Tour’s Madeleines with their Vigil Lamps is not far away, but surely it is more mysterious.) The other is by Lévy-Dhurmer, where the title Essais de Montaigne is placed in front of a shelf of more indecipherable titles, with the volumes slightly askant, and features the profile of an intense blue-cravatted man staring at something beyond the book.

We know that face. I kept thinking, ah yes, Mahler a bit, but someone else—rabid and musing on something or other. His crinkly hair as he leans slightly forward. And then, Clairin’s waterscape with narrative hints of Sick Women Being Removed from Venice in a gondola, whose ferryman is just a golden trace above the lagoon.

Christ and Magdalene by Fidus (Hugo Höppener of the German School) has a young savior treading on a cloud, pointing vaguely up at the cross, while a Simeon Solomon-like angel is just about the most gorgeously delicate creature imaginable, with wings trailing voluptuously and one knee bent, as if kneeling into some soft surface.

What a show—with staring eyes and ghostly apparitions and a bit of erotic delectation.