Conclusion

James Kearns

From Symbolist Landscapes. The Place of Painting in the Poetry and Criticism of Mallarmé and His Circle (1989), pp. 164-67, doi:10.59860/td.c6b124c

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Part of the book: Symbolist Landscapes. The Place of Painting in the Poetry and Criticism of Mallarmé and His Circle

James Kearns

MHRA Texts and Dissertations 27

Modern Humanities Research Association

ModernFrenchPoetryopen


Abstract.  During the final quarter of the nineteenth century, the relationships between French literature and the visual arts were diverse, eclectic and indiscriminate. To attend exhibitions, publish art criticism and produce work derived from or containing specific pictorial reference and analogy was by then a well-established French literary tradition, with all that this implied in terms of institutional and generic practices and constraints. As far as the Symbolists were concerned, Mallarmé and the young poets and critics grouped around him had direct and frequent access to the painters, dealers, curators and historians whose activity and contacts determined the production and circulation of art. The art history and criticism written by those involved in the Symbolist movement complemented rather than opposed their well-known claim that art was to aspire to the condition of music and helped to ensure that, at the end of the nineteenth century, the visual arts in France continued to be as much read as seen.

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