The title Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (translated into French as Histoires extraordinaires) combines two terms taken from the vocabulary of the decorative arts, erecting an aesthetic system on the opposition between fantastic caricature and nonfigurative ornament, between the deformation of the body and the pure abstraction of line, between what belongs to the metaphysical domain and what does not. The choice of this graphic metaphor as the title of a collection of stories posits a principle of equivalence betwen literary and artistic expression. A radical shift stems from the postulate that the aesthetic realm can have pertinence that empowers it, like a philosophical system, to generate a comprehensive conception of the world. The perspective opened by Poe and Baudelaire, given its metaphysical ambitions and poetic scope, pointed the way to a pan-aestheticism that would be incarnated by Symbolism.
– Rodolphe Rapetti, Symbolism, trans. Deke Dusinberre, Flammarion, Paris, 2005, pp. 65-66
As Baudelaire wrote, “The unique and supreme pleasure of love resides in the certainty of doing evil. And man and woman know right from birth that in evil resides all pleasure.” An awareness of and quest for evil as a requirement of freedom are what set artists apart from the rest of society. Satanism and dandyism went together – both were modern inscriptions of myth. Baudelaire’s modernity was of course subject to current events, current fashions, and the shifting flow of social life; but his acute attention to the present, far from being cultivated as a value in itself, existed only as a function of a quest for timeless qualities.
– Ibid., p. 75
– Félicien Rops, Calvary, 1882
Félicien Rops (1833-1898) … Described as a “phony idler.” [by Edmon Picard, “L’infame Fély,” L’Art moderne 43, October 24, 1886, p. 338]
– Ibid. p. 69
Rops’s picture of sexuality was basically modern in so far as it involved risk and a certain technical skill, and eschewed metaphor.
– p. 74
– Félicien Rops, Black Mass, 1883
The Frenchman’s imagery clearly conditioned the erotic imagination of an entire era and a social class.
A few extant photographs by Pierre Louÿs testify to the persistence of Rops’s conception, although here the maniacal, erotic tension ultimately turns to parody.
– Pierre Louÿs, Nude Girl on Harmonium, c. 1895
The altar has been replaced by a harmonium and the symmetrical organisation of Rops’s composition has given way to a dislocation in which the female figure takes on the vacancy of a doll. Her body goes from consenting victim in Rops’s work to an automaton with lifeless eyes, waiting for someone to come along and pull all the stops that govern movement. Eroticism is disembodied to the point where all that remains is a perverse fascination with what has become a mechanical performance. Through voyeurism, Rops’s satanism has ebbed into mockery, fantasy has become desanctified.
– Ibid., pp. 73-74
The Nabis’s theatrical activity, and their work with Jarry around marionettes, was not a mere sideline to painting even if it left few visible traces. It was an integral part of their exploration of the relationship between tangible reality and various fictional forms that an artwork might adopt. The return to the Italian primitives and to noble forms consecrated by history thus also had a subversive counterpart, one that drew on a playful, lower-class tradition and that enjoyeda significant, if subterranean, heritage … As a theatre of pure concepts, Symbolism thus conjured up a dramaturgy in which an author’s inventiveness could forgo flesh-and-blood actors. “The acting in such works … matters little. You can’t find actors who can create states of mind,” wrote A. van Bever on Maeterlinck. [in his Maurice Maeterlinck, Paris, 1904, p. 15]
– Ibid., p. 83
– Thommy Conroy’s production of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi with puppets, Pittsburgh, USA, 2007
– Marian Pecko’s production of Maurice Maeterlinck’s The Blind with puppets Bialystok, Poland, 2001
