Page 64 - Studio International - July August 1972

Huysmans, among the writers. Mr Lucie-Smith cycle in the Pantheon, or ostensibly It is also full of inaccuracies, some quite serious,
acknowledges the importance of A Rebours, mythological works, like Moreau's treatments of some merely ludicrous. Of the latter variety is
with its descriptions of works by Redon and the Orpheus theme, or his Jupiter and Semele Mr Lucie-Smith's identification of the figure
Moreau, and its embodiment of the 'decadent' can all be felt to possess a dimension beyond of Aphrodite, in Burne-Jones's Pygmalion:
(another label which would benefit from fuller that implied by the simple meanings of The Godhead Fires, as the sculptor himself.
discussion). But in a purely technical sense preconceived narrative or the juxtaposition of This, as may well be imagined, makes possible
Huysmans's passage from naturalistic fiction allegorical personifications. In Moreau's case a powerful demonstration of Burne-Jones's love
to byzantine exoticism is perhaps less radical a it is this very accumulation of detail, in its of the androgyne.
development than it may at first appear to be. painterly and its sensuous effect, which is one That is an instance of a painting looked at in
And the technique of lengthy, minute of the means whereby the artist exceeds his the most cursory and unenquiring manner, of
description of paintings in Huysmans's salon brief, whereby he proves himself, in symbolist an unthinking interpretation in the light of
criticism of the early eighties is carried over terms, an artist rather than a mere illustrator, preconceived ideas. In other cases one wonders
into the new climate of sensibility; indeed that enriching his themes in a personal way. The art, if he has looked at the works at all. Puvis de
technique might almost, in Huysmans's case one might say, lies in what is left over after the Chavannes's Peace and War, early works of
(though clearly not in Mallarmé's, for instance) bare narrative formula has been grasped; it is conventional format, though large scale, where
be said to make the expression of that sensibility what gives the narrative framework a subjective space is rendered in depth and the figures make
possible. There is an analogy here, not only significance beyond the definably 'intentional'. full use of it, are described as 'frieze-like'.
with Gauguin, but more obviously with And this subjectivism is common to both These paintings are not illustrated. On the
Moreau himself; an artist who though never a allegory and history, as rendered by painters other hand the author has allowed an illustration
naturalist (if Naturalism is regarded as the style like Moreau and Puvis, and to the more of Aman-Jean's St Julian the Hospitaller, a piece
appropriate to realist intentions in art), strictly symbolic modes, like that of Odilon of academic naturalism dated 1882, to appear
believed in loading his canvases with detail Redon, where the 'meaning' is normally as characteristic of the kind of work advocated
whose significance lies at least as much in its embodied in a single image. by Madan and exhibited at his Rosicrucian
cumulative effect as in its intrinsic iconographic In the absence of any discussion of issues of salons after 1892, though it is in fact a pretty
significance. this kind, Mr Lucie-Smith's book can only be good example of just the sort of art the
Here, in fact, we are brought back to the judged in terms of its more particularized Rosicrucians rejected.
distinction between symbol and allegory, and treatment of individual artists. Unfortunately These examples (and others could be cited)
this too, like the distinction between Naturalism it is here that the book's weaknesses become most give the reader little faith in the author's eye.
and Symbolism, begins to appear less clear-cut immediately apparent. There is virtually no His unfamiliarity with his subject is also
than Mr Lucie-Smith's brevity will allow. For sense of any real contact between the writer and betrayed by frequent errors of fact and
allegorical works like some of Puvis de the works of art which he marshals as exemplary. emphasis. It is odd that although he is able to
Chavannes's murals, or ostensibly historical The book betrays no love of paintings, and very describe Schuffenecker as a Theosophist, he
works, like the same painter's Sainte Genevieve little for the subject more broadly considered. illustrates Ranson's Christ and Buddha, a most

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