The Fictionalization of Art Criticism: Gustave Moreau’s Works in À rebours, by Joris- Karl Huysmans

Abstract

During the second half of the nineteenth century, painters and writers closely contributed with each other, the first ones producing works inspired on literary texts, the second ones practicing art criticism. Such is the case of Joris-Karl Huysmans, who, in 1883, gave to be printed a compilation of critical essays in which he dedicated remarkable passages to the works of the symbolist painter Gustave Moreau. A year later, Huysmans published his novel A? rebours, where he took up again literally some extracts from these essays. This article focuses in such superposition and upholds the hypothesis that Huysmans, in A? rebours, presents the project of a pure critic, that is, a critical speech that in spite of having as immediate object an specific work of art, seeks to dissociate itself from this subsidiary condition and raise itself to the category of artwork. Huysmans’ ambition is outlined in different identifications and appropriations, and it places the problem of representation in the spotlight, in the novel of the second half of the nineteenth century as well as in art criticism, as a problem of the relations between different sign systems (word/image), the diverse levels of relations between the speeches (the one concerning critic/the fictional one) and in reference to what is represented.