ABSTRACT
Six months after Aurier gave his definition of symbolist painting in the Mercure, there appeared in Le Figaro the manifesto of an artistic programme similarly disdainful of both realism and the Academy. He continued to draw upon a stock of familiar motifs indicates much less a lack of imagination than the degree to which his art was still profoundly ideiste: the concept came first, it was given material form through a synthesis of appropriate visual elements. Denis explained that his participation was prohibited both by his religious beliefs and his aesthetic convictions. In 1899 Maurice Denis wrote to Gauguin, asking him to take part in an exhibition he was preparing for the coming Universal Exposition of 1900. If Gauguin has found a typical symbolist subject, he is also interpreting it in characteristic fashion. Because although the subject is allegorical, it lacks both the spelled-out iconography and the active inter-relationships of the traditional allegory.
