Was Symbolism the Most Mysterious Movement in Art?

Feature image: Arnold Böcklin, Isle of the Dead, 1880 via Wikipedia; Credit: Kunstmuseum Basel, Martin P. Bühler

Art has always been a vehicle for human emotion, mythology, and metaphysical reflection, but few movements have delved as deeply into the subconscious and the spiritual as Symbolism. Emerging in the late 19th century, Symbolism was not simply a style but an attitude, a rejection of rationalism and realism in favor of dreams, mysticism, and inner truths. Its imagery is often eerie, poetic, and open to endless interpretation.

But what makes Symbolism so mysterious? And how did it shape the course of modern art?

Symbolism began in France and Belgium during the 1880s as a literary movement before permeating the visual arts. It was a response to naturalism and realism, which had dominated the mid-19th century, and to industrialization, which had begun to change life irreversibly.

Writers like Stéphane Mallarmé, Charles Baudelaire, and Paul Verlaine aimed to express the ineffable, emotions, dreams, and metaphysical ideas through poetic suggestion rather than straightforward depiction. Painters and sculptors soon followed, creating haunting images that conveyed inner states, archetypes, and mythic symbols rather than real-life subjects.

The Salon de la Rose + Croix, a mystical and occult-inspired art exhibition organized by Joséphin Péladan in Paris, became a central stage for Symbolist artists and thinkers. These exhibitions helped solidify Symbolism as an art form and a movement steeped in ritual, secrecy, and spirituality.

Several factors contribute to the enigmatic quality of Symbolist works, the first being the ambiguous iconography present throughout the movement. Unlike religious or historical art, Symbolist works often refuse to explain themselves. A lone figure bathed in strange light, a spectral forest, a mythical beast; these symbols are deliberately open-ended, encouraging personal interpretation over literal understanding.

Obscurity played a large part in Symbolism's mysticism. Many Symbolist artists drew from alchemy, mysticism, mythology, the occult, and obscure literature. Without deep knowledge of these references, viewers are often left with a sense of wonder or unease.

Lastly, artists of this movement were dedicated to portraying dreamlike aesthetics. Symbolist artists broke with classical composition and embraced a dreamlike, atmospheric quality. Figures seem to float, dissolve, or become absorbed by their surroundings, reflecting the influence of subconscious thought and altered states of perception.

A precursor to the movement, Gustave Moreau’s works are saturated with biblical and mythological references, but always rendered with an otherworldly glow. His Oedipus and the Sphinx (1864) captures the Symbolist fascination with fate, riddles, and the limits of human knowledge.

Odilon Redon is the ultimate Symbolist; his pastel-hued visions and charcoal noirs merge fantasy, religion, and hallucination. In works like The Cyclops or Eye Balloon, Redon embraces surreal imagery decades before the Surrealists would follow.

This Belgian artist captured an icy, eerie atmosphere in works like I Lock My Door Upon Myself, where a red-haired woman floats in solitude surrounded by roses and mirrors. Fernand Khnopff’s art oozes silence and introspection.

While often associated with Art Nouveau and the Vienna Secession, Gustav Klimt’s early works, such as Pallas Athene and Judith and the Head of Holofernes, embody Symbolist ideals of eroticism, myth, and death.

Jean Delville, a deeply mystical painter and theorist, saw art as a gateway to spiritual transcendence. His large canvases, such as The School of Plato, are intricate, luminous allegories that demand slow, meditative looking.

Many Symbolists were influenced by esoteric systems, such as Theosophy, Rosicrucianism, Eastern philosophy, astrology, and tarot. They believed that art could reveal hidden truths and that beauty was a bridge to higher consciousness.

For example, Joséphin Péladan, founder of the Rose + Croix Salon, saw artists as spiritual initiates whose work could guide humanity toward enlightenment. Symbolist paintings were meant to be admired and contemplated like sacred texts.

This mystical component made Symbolism a movement of outsiders and visionaries, unmoored from politics and conventional morality.

While Symbolism was eventually eclipsed by the bold formal innovations of Cubism, Fauvism, and later Surrealism, its influence did not vanish; it evolved, echoing through the decades in subtle yet profound ways. More than just a fleeting aesthetic trend, Symbolism planted seeds that would take root in some of the most important art movements of the 20th century.

Expressionism, for instance, adopted Symbolism’s raw emotional intensity and preoccupation with the human psyche. Artists like Edvard Munch and Egon Schiele drew on the Symbolist desire to reveal internal states of suffering, ecstasy, and anxiety, using distortion and color to express psychological depth rather than physical reality.

The Surrealists, particularly Max Ernst and André Breton, openly admired Symbolism’s commitment to dream logic, mysticism, and the power of the unconscious. While their work was more radical in form, the underlying goal, to access truths hidden beneath the surface of conscious thought, remained deeply Symbolist in spirit. The dreamscapes of Redon and the mythological allegories of Gustave Moreau can be seen as direct ancestors of Surrealist explorations into automatism, chance, and symbolic transformation.

Even the birth of abstraction owes a debt to Symbolism. Artists like Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian were heavily influenced by Symbolist ideals, especially the belief that color, form, and composition could convey spiritual meaning beyond representational imagery. Kandinsky, in particular, saw abstraction as a continuation of Symbolist pursuits, stripping away the literal to arrive at a kind of visual metaphysics.

Today, Symbolism's influence is more relevant than ever. In an age overwhelmed by digital noise, material excess, and algorithmic curation, there’s a renewed hunger for art that feels spiritual, visionary, and transcendent. Contemporary artists who explore mysticism, folklore, and personal mythology, whether through painting, performance, or digital media, often unknowingly continue the Symbolist legacy. The movement’s embrace of mystery over clarity, and introspection over spectacle, offers a timeless counterbalance to the modern world’s obsession with instant readability.

Unlike movements with clear manifestos or defined visual styles, Symbolism resists easy categorization. It was less a formal school and more a philosophy, a shared yearning among artists to express the inexpressible.

Symbolism invites us to slow down and sit with mystery, to value suggestion over certainty, and emotion over explanation. Symbolism dares us to go deeper in a world increasingly driven by speed, clarity, and surface appearances.

Was Symbolism the most mysterious movement in art? Quite possibly. But perhaps it’s better to say that Symbolism reminds us that the most impactful art doesn’t always reveal its secrets, at least not all at once.

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