Activities per year
Abstract
“
One of those who defined themselves as
modern in order to believe”: 1
J.-K. Huysmans’s
autobiographical comment in an
1883 letter to Paul Bourget, pinpoints
an emerging paradox both in his and his period’s art. That
is, an increasing focus on art and literature as stimuli for
suggestively aestheticized religious and mystic experiences,
yet as mediated through the fin-de-siècle’s newest scientific
interests and discourses. There is a rich literature on science,
its interfaces with art and transforming ideas of the
spiritual from the mid-nineteenth century onwards – from
Jules Verne’s “science-in-fiction,”2
Darwinist-inspired
spiritual evolutionism,3
to Symbolist occultism – especially
in fuelling fascination with shifting boundaries of fiction
and life; sensation and self; modernity and the spiritual.
The extent to which resurgent late nineteenth-century
religious revivals or their newer expressions contributed to,
politicized, and complicated this momentum is perhaps less
explored and merits closer study.4
This article’s concern
is a more specific, yet neglected aesthetics and politics of
spiritual revival through conceptions of art which, arguably,
were to contribute compelling new insights within these
broader developments. Focusing on two of the period’s
most prominent art writers – Fromentin and Huysmans –
it examines their suggestive navigation of tensions between
science, the natural, art and subjectivity around a growing
interest in the spirituality of Northern European Renaissance
artists as so-called “primitives” to develop models of
art that do not so much transcend, but rather amplify these
tensions.
My article’s particular focus is two-fold. First it considers
how and for what purposes, Fromentin and Huysmans
reposition ideas of “primitive” or regressive artistic
tendencies from earlier art-historical periods as touchstones
for a fin-de-siècle evolving modernity of vision and perception.
My second, closely linked theme examines Huysmans’s
developed interest in such innovations to show how, via
Impressionism and especially from Certains (1889), his
concern with a suggestive spirituality of both art and its
experience, becomes consummately embodied in his
emblem of the primitif modern artist.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Title of host publication | Between Light and Darkness: New Perspectives in Symbolism Research |
Editors | Marja Lahelma |
Place of Publication | Helsinki |
Publisher | The Birch and the Star – Finnish Perspectives on the Long 19th Century |
Pages | 16-25 |
Volume | 10 |
ISBN (Print) | 978-952-93-4025-5 |
Publication status | Published - 2014 |
Bibliographical note
The full text is not yet available on the repository, but can be downloaded from here: https://birchandstar.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/simpson.pdfFingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Science, Belief and the Art of Subjectivity: From Fromentin’s to Huysmans’s Modern Primitifs'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Activities
- 1 Invited talk
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'Nordic Gothic Modernisms'
Juliet Simpson (Invited speaker)
4 Oct 2016 → 6 Oct 2016Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk
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Nordic Devotions: Gothic Art as Erotic Affect: ― J.- K. Huysmans’s and Maurice Barrès’s Decadent Devotio Moderns
Simpson, J., 11 Jul 2019, Nordic Literature of Decadence. Rossi, R., Lyytikäinen, P., Parente-Čapková, V. & Hinrikus, M. (eds.). UK/USA: Routledge, p. 276-294 18 p.Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter › peer-review
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'Primitive Renaissances': Northern European and Germanic Art at the Fin de Siecle to 1930s
Simpson, J., 2018, (Accepted/In press) Farnham/New York: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. 360 p.Research output: Book/Report › Book › peer-review
Profiles
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Juliet Simpson
- Research Centre for Arts, Memory and Communities - Professor of Art History and Visual Arts
Person: Teaching and Research