The Aesthetic Characteristics And Causes Of Gustave Moreau's Works

In the second half of the nineteenth century,the art world in France went through a subversive transformation.History painting,as an official art,has gradually lost its dominant state.In the era of the vigorous development of rationalism,new generation artists have begun to go through a different path,away from the academic art,therefor caused the birth of impressionism,realism,naturalism and other styles.Capitalism and industries growing at an incredible speed while the traditional moral and political system falling apart,all these add up together,lead to a huge group of people protesting about the decadent society via art and literature.Gustave Moreau,the artist whom had been known for his style involving these enigmatic elements,caught the public’s attention.In this paper,I’ll be analyzing Moreau’s oeuvres separately to get a full understanding of the special aesthetic features of Moreau’s art,as well as placing the artist back to his time,get a better view of his entire artistic life and find the origin source of these aesthetic features.These special aesthetic features are sorted into two aspects:motif and style,are discussed respectively.In the motifs,Moreau’s works showed special ways of applications the classic subject,these applications are neither academic nor revolutionary,his reconstruct of the scenes,the rebellion for academic drama and the preference for the conflict in the theme gave his work unique narration;in style,he went from archaism to a huge amount of decors,and developed to an abstract expression.These features made clear his vision for a great ideal art.Moreau’s works had their particularity at that time.Understand the causes of this specific aesthetic feature will peep us to get a better perspective of Moreau’s oeuvres.From his artistic practice,we get to see how the classism education and academic training has a fundamental effect on his works,and how the renaissance master’s works dominate his direction on the path.The society elements,on the other hand,as a deep root source for his work,also showed great importance.These works which can be called enigmatic,looks totally heading to the wrong direction away from its time,but the aesthetic ideas in them are not outdated at all,on the contrary,they are avant-garde.When giving the symbolists inspirations,surrealists also find essential elements in Moreau’s dreams.As a professor in 1’école de beau art,Moreau’s conscientious teaching also made Albert Marquet,Georges Rouault and Henri Matisse developed unique styles and aesthetic opinions,they later became a force not to be ignored in modern art.Based on the analysis of individual works,this paper studied the unique aesthetic characteristics of Moreau’s art,put them in their time and under Moreau’s own aesthetic opinions,and summarize the characteristics of universality.Through these characteristics,we might be able to trace back to their origins,and get a better understanding of his works and the influence he has.At the same time,we get to realize his works and the spiritualism ideas they represent still has its value,and might give us new inspirations.