Decadence and Dark Dreams. Belgian Symbolism - Fernand Khnopff from the Musea Brugge

Film

The seductive glimpse into the abyss, the exaggerated aestheticism of a society marked by overabundance and crisis, the morbid attraction between Thanatos and Eros – these are some of the themes that found expression in the art of the 19th century, especially in Belgian Symbolism. In sharp contrast to the enthusiasm of Naturalism and Impressionism for the superficial, a new artistic movement emerged in the 1880s characterised by the sensual, by magic and profound meaning, even irrationality. 

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As such, Symbolism can be seen as anticipating Freud’s theory of the interpretation of dreams, which he published in 1899. The exhibition aims to present this spectrum of previously little-known Belgian positions to a broad public as an important reference for European Symbolism from Gustave Moreau to Arnold Böcklin and Max Klinger to Gustav Klimt and Edvard