The Art of Evocation. The Symbolist Movement in Belgium
(Anne Marie Musschoot) The Low Countries - 1994, № 2, pp. 148-155
In Belgium, the flowering of symbolism coincided with the rise of avant-garde art in the final years of the nineteenth century, a period which produced an amalgamation of artists and art forms such as had never been seen before (nor has ever been seen since): as well as the intense cooperation between poets and visual artists so characteristic of symbolism, at that that time the cultures of the country's two main languages – Dutch and French - showed a remarkable unity. We have to remember that, for historical reasons, between 1880 and 1900 French culture had become dominant even in Dutch-speaking Flanders. The narcissistic, aristocratically-refined art of for instance Khnopff — a Belgian of German origin combines pretty well all the leitmotifs of French and British symbolism. It thus confirms the remarkably international character of the symbolist conceptual universe.
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