The human expressions of the Renaissance were followed by the ornate age of the Baroque period, which was, in turn, supplanted by Neoclassicism, and the revival of Greco-Roman themes at the beginning of the 19th century. With the inception of new art movements during the 1800's, great swings of the pendulum occurred, from Romanticism, to Realism, to Impressionism and finally to Symbolism.

Historically, Symbolism spanned the decades between 1848 and 1914, but culminated between 1890 and 1900 when it became designated as an art movement. Artists were turning to subjective imagery and fantasy in direct reaction to artistic reproductions of the outer world by Realist and Impressionist artists and by the recently-born medium of photography.

Symbolism was particularly influential in opening the door to Expressionism, Surrealism, and in some way to the entirety of Modernism. Despite descending from a lineage that included the Symbolist movement, modern works of art — especially Abstract Art — came to be viewed as prima facie expressions of formal concerns such as color, texture and scale. During the last one hundred years, viewers have been offered a plethora of visual images without much in the way of symbolic meaning to balance subjective, emotional experience.

As a contemporary Symbolist, I feel my artwork is a reaction against modern art's resistance to the use of symbols as an expressive form. In a work of art, formal elements represent only half of the expression, the inclusion of symbolic elements restores the missing half. The addition of metaphoric content to the emotive paradigm results in a more holistic, and thus richer, exchange with the viewer.

As a society undergoes a growing phase, so does its artistic expression. Societal growth is often accompanied by a corresponding fear of the unknown. Visual artists can generate hope for a better future with works of art that marry the intuitive verve of non-linear Expressionism with the rational universality of Symbolism. This is as true today as it was at the end of the 19th century.

Neptune's Horses, by English painter Walter Crane, is a typical example of 19th century Symbolist art. Neptune, God of the Sea, is represented with his trident, an attribute of his authority, in his cockleshell chariot, an attribute of his leadership. Rather than a depiction of the traditional hybrid seahorses pulling the chariot, strength and vitality is represented by terrestrial equines with webbed hooves, a quality reinforced by the power of the undulating waves. As in Botticelli's Birth of Venus (pp. 10-11), the maritime coastal water is an important symbolic element. While the shells in the left corner represent the visible world, the maritime depths hide a dark, invisible universe. It comes as no surprise that the maritime water symbolizes the unfathomable mysteries of the unconscious. Thus the painter's global message announces the mysterious powers of the unconscious.

It is noteworthy that Freud discovered the notion of unconscious during the 1890's, but more personal than universal this theory did not appeal to the Symbolists. In the 1920's, Carl Jung revealed the concept of collective unconscious that could have inspired the Symbolist spirit, but at that time, Symbolism had already gone out of fashion. The Surrealists later drew on Freud's psychoanalytical theory by using symbols of their dreams as a basis for artistic expression. While Surrealism and Symbolism both utilized symbols of the unconscious, a major distinction must be made between the collective symbols of the Symbolists and the personal symbols of the Surrealists.