Symbolism is an artistic movement bringing together many artists with divergent approaches. It does not unite artists under the same banner, but brings them together in the defense of a common thought. The artists of this movement consider that art must portray the inner world, that of the moods and emotions of the artist. They are inspired by poetry, mystery, romanticism, and their own sensibility. They invest in the irrational through different means: imagination, dreams, hypnosis, drugs, or even psychoanalysis (quest for the unconscious). They seek to create a psychological impact in the brain of the beholder, through recurring subjects such as the occult, mystical experiences, the erotic and the perverse. The spearheads of this current are the French artists Odilon Redon and Gustave Moreau, whose dreamlike and macabre universes make us discover the dark side of life. Other European artists marked symbolic painting, notably the Belgian painter James Ensor and his carnival figures, monsters and skeletons, or the Norwegian Edvard Munch and his famous Cry, a visual expression of a mental state of despair and horror, definetely an iconic work.
