Passionate Discontent: The Creative Process and Gender Difference in the French Symbolist Period.
- Resource Type
- Essay
- Authors
- Mathews, Patricia
- Source
- Bulletin of the Allen Memorial Art Museum; 1988, Vol. 43 Issue 1, p20-30, 11p, 2 Black and White Photographs
- Subject
- Language
- ISSN
- 00025739
This essay attempts to outline the nature of creativity during the late 19th-century French Symbolist period and explores the gender difference with respect to the emotional state of awareness and passionate discontent evident in several works of art. The necessity of pain and suffering in the development of artistic sensibility as represented by artists during this period is recognized. It examines the connection of madness and genius as claimed by Italian Cesare Lombroso and explores how the concepts of woman as nature are illustrated in art.