More interdisciplinary than a room of grad students

COURTESY NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON Munch's 1896 Symbolist work, 'The Flower of Love,' is on display at YUAG.

Symbolist Prints from Manet to Munch, an exhibit at the Yale University Art Gallery, contains work from one of the most complex and engaging artistic movements to flourish in fin-de-siècle Europe. With roots in the fantastical imagery of Romanticism and the technical innovations of Realism and Impressionism, Symbolist artists sought to create works that were at once modern and timeless. The development of the print medium proved to be a catalyst for their achievements, linking text and image in newly imaginative ways and making it possible for artists to disseminate their work beyond academic confines. The prints in this show represent the diverse products of this visual culture in flux, spanning a range from narrative-driven illustration to images that frustrate any attempts at literary interpretation.

At the entrance to the exhibit's room is Manet's series of lithographs from 1875 illustrating a Mallarmé translation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven." This straightforward series works as an introduction to Symbolism; Manet's images retain the structure of Poe's narrative, each one tied to a specific moment in the poem. Technique, as well as subject, is a vehicle of textual meaning: featherlike strokes and Manet's signature stark blacks evoke Poe's nightmarish bird, while rhythmic parallel marks mimic the poem's distinct meter.

Equally literary, though more difficult to read, is Felix Braquemond's series of etchings after Gustave Moreau, illustrating the fables of LaFontaine. Unlike the lithographic medium, the etching allows for miniscule, precise detail, well-suited to the translation of Moreau's needlepoint brushwork. Each print is an exotic microcosm packed with iconography, as in the byzantine splendor of The Dream of an Inhabitant of Mogul. The cluttered imagery of this series seems oddly incompatible with the simple moral mission of LaFontaine's text, which was aimed primarily at children.

Symbolist artists were not limited to the interpretation of literary texts. In a less standard approach to narrative, Henri Fantin-Latour's series of lithographs represents scenes from Wagner's operas. Wagner's use of myth and ritual had many parallels in Symbolism. Moreover, the Wagnerian synthesis of art forms was a major Symbolist aspiration; encouraged by Baudelaire's theory of "correspondences," artists and writers extended the aesthetic experience beyond their particular disciplines. While Fantin-Latour's imagery does not confront the inherent abstraction of music, the lyricism of his prints reflects his musical inspiration.

Moving away from the specificity of the previous series, Besnard's Femme etchings take as their subject the varied experience of womanhood. The series is a centerpiece of the show, calling attention to the importance of women in the Symbolist consciousness. Besnard's "femme" passes through every possible role for a woman in 19th-century Paris; while she is a lover, she also is a mother, widow, society mistress, victim, and whore, culminating in an image of "apotheosis." She is a symbol, but at the same time, constrained to Besnard's tightly constructed scenes, she lacks identity.

Some prints evoke sympathy for woman, while others simply imply her culpability. A few of the works do both, as the frontispiece, which shows a woman half-exposed in a charged play of contrast.

Later Symbolist works delved into mythology, resisting the specificity of particular texts. Gaugin's woodcuts reveal that Symbolism was not truly new; it tapped into artistic traditions that had existed in other cultures for centuries. His prints fuse stock imagery from the Polynesian islands with elements of Christian myth, reducing form to a series of synthetic hieroglyghs. The artist's physical confrontation with his medium is clear; unlike lithography or etching, woodcutting requires a forceful hand and does not allow the same control of lines. A similar energy is apparent in the show's single Munch print of a couple intertwined in primordial swirls of lithographic crayon. Without relying on text, Munch creates a powerfully ambiguous image, suggesting within the bliss of union an expressionist paranoia of self-loss.

Things get ominous as the circle leads back to Manet's "Raven." In Charles Dulac's windswept landscapes, the sky glows with a mysterious light source behind the possessed silhouettes of trees. Landscape, a rare subject for Symbolism, becomes successfully introspective in these lithographs. Meanwhile, Felix Valloton creates graphic, darkly comical portraits of society with a cartoonish use of black and white.

The works in this exhibition reward repeated visits--the most elusive demand them. Despite the literary heritage of the movement, Symbolism often frustrates attempts to "decode" its imagery. Rather, the most engaging prints achieve meaning through a variety of effects and associations well worth the challenge of contemplation.

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