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Jean Delville's Idealist Art and Writings: Art between Nature and the Absolute

by Brendan Cole

Forthcoming: This book has been expanded over the past year (2011-2012) and will now be published, at twice the original length,  by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. The book will also be more extensively illustrated than originally planned. Estimated publishing date will be Autumn 2013

 

Brendan Cole is currently undertaking a full-length study of the life, artistic work and writings of Jean Delville. He completed his Doctorate at Christ Church, Oxford University (UK, 2000), and his doctoral thesis was an in-depth study of Delville's art and ideas. His interest in Delville is borne out of an extensive academic involvement in Symbolist art and writings and he has recently published a well-received essay in the Art Bulletin on Delville's contemporary, Fernand Khnopff: 'Nature and the Ideal in Fernand Khnopff's "Avec Verhaeren: Un Ange" and "Art or the Caresses"'(The Art Bulletin, XCI, Number 3, pp. 325-342, September 2009).

 

To date there are no monographs on Delville, and it is believed that this will be one of the first to study thoroughly the relationship between Delville's extensive publications and his art. For further information please contact the author.

 

 

Recent essays published Brendan Cole on Delville include:

  • Jean Delville’s “La Mission de l’Art”: Hegelian Echoes in fin-de-siècle Idealism,  in Religion and the Arts, 11, Numbers 3–4, pp. 330–372, 2007. (link here)

  • L’École de Platon de Jean Delville: Amour, beauté et androgynie dans la peinture fin-de-siècle,  La Revue Des Musées De France: Revue Du Louvre, 4, 53–59, 2006

  • 'Jean Delville and the Belgian avant-garde: Anti-materialist polemics in support of “un art annonciateur des spiritualités futures”’, in Rosina Neginsky (ed.), Symbolism, Its Origins and Its Consequences, Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 2011

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The following sample from the Contents should give a helpful idea of its extent and scope:

 

PART I: History   

      

Chapter One: Delville and the Belgian fin-de-siècle       

  • Introduction     

  • Early life and artistic training     

  • Delville, the Academy and the Avant-garde      

  • The fin-de-siècle avant-gardes: Les XX and L’Art Moderne     

  • Delville and Avant-garde Journalism     

  • The Avant-garde, Belgian society and political change during the fin-de-siècle   

  • The Avant-garde and Symbolism         

  • Delville’s polemical advance – Le ‘Beau Geste du Cygne’        

  • The Salons d’Art Idéaliste – ‘Le culte pour la Beauté pur’        

  • Marketing modernity: Idealist art versus avant-garde commodity? 

       

Chapter Two: Debut, L’Essor and Pour l’Art   

  • L’Essor 1887 to 1891 

    • L’Essor 1888  

    • L’Essor 1889  

    • L’Essor 1890  

    • L’Essor 1891  

  • Pour l’Art (1892, 1894, 1895)

    • Pour l’Art 1892           

    • Delville’s defence of Péladan    

    • Pour l’Art 1894           

    • Pour L’Art 1895         

  • La Coopérative artistique         

  • Prix de Rome (1895)   

  • Conclusion      

 

Chapter Three: The Salons D’Art Idéaliste       

  • Salon d’Art Idéaliste 1896       

  • Salon d’Art Idéaliste 1897       

  • Salon d’Art Idéaliste 1898       

  • Delville and the Glasgow School of Art 1900-1905      

  • Conclusion  

   

PART II: Theory  

      

Chapter Four: L’Indéfinissable Frisson de L’Infini : Dialogue Entre Nous and Delville’s Esthétique Idéaliste       

  • Occultism’s ‘Lueurs sur L’inconnu’      

  • ‘la Spiritualisation de l’Art’ – Art in search of the Ideal 

    • ‘Les Trois Mondes’ de la Magie – foundation principles of Ideal Beauty           

    • Line – the expression of the Ideal in Art

    • Idealist art as an expression of Equilibrium        

  • The Absolute – the Occult source of Beauty     

    • Unity, God and the expression of Beauty          

    • Art as a expression of Divine Harmony, Symmetry and Number           

  • Nature and Matter – The Idea, Art and the Symbol      

    • The Idea          

    • Correspondences        

    • The Symbol     

  • The Spiritual role of the Artist   

  • Summary of Delville’s Esthétique Idéaliste        

  • L’Esthétique Idéaliste and Nineteenth century Occult Aesthetics.          

  • Delville’s Esthétique Idéaliste and Péladan’s ‘École d’art Idéaliste’      

     

PART III: Practise       

 

Chapter Five: To Hell and Back, the Initiate’s way in Delville’s Paintings       

  • The Initiate and ‘la double polarisation de la lumière universelle’

  • Trésors de Sathan (1895): ‘les ravages de l’amour charnel’      

    • The Decadents and the Devil    

  • L’Idole de la Perversité (1891): The ‘bride of the devil’

    • An initiatory figure …   

    • The serpents of Light   

    • Sex, sin and Satan: the fin-de-siècle fatal female

  • Tristan et Yseult (1887): ‘le mariage de deux âmes sœurs’        

    • Love and Death in the fin de siècle: ‘L’Amour et la Mort, c’est la même chose …’        

    • The Soul and Death: ‘le papillon de Psyché’     

  • L’Ange des Splendeurs (1894): ‘l’Homme … retourne à Dieu’ 

    • Spiritual Evolution and Reincarnation    

  • L’Amour des Ames (1900): Unity and Equilibrium through Love – the Way to the Absolute      

    • The Nude: Expression of the Metaphysical       

    • Unity through spiritual love       

    • Delville’s notion of spiritual love           

  • L’Esthétique Idéaliste Classicism and Occultism – The Great Tradition

 

Chapter Six: L’Ecole de Platon: Love, Beauty and Androgyny in Delville’s Esthétique Idéaliste  

  • Plato’s Akademos, the Androgyne and Spiritual Beauty

  • The Hermetic myth of Original Unity     

  • Péladan and the Androgyne: ‘synthèse plastique’          

  • The Androgyne and the theory of Equilibrium; the ‘Loi du Ternaire’      

  • Delville’s Platonic sermon concerning ‘le grand Equilibre dans l’Ordre Universel’          

  • L’Ecole de Platon and the fin-de-siècle cult of Ideal Beauty      

  • Ideal, or Spiritual Love

  • Responses to l’Ecole de Platon