Resumen de Gustave Moreau's 'Œdipus and the sphinx': archaism, temptation and the nude at the Salon of 1864
Adapted from a paper presented at the “History Painting in Nineteenth-century France” conference held at the University of Manchester, England, in September 2002. The writer explores Gustave Moreau's intentions and ambitions in creating his Œdipus and the sphinx (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) for the Salon of 1864, and the extensive critical reaction it provoked. Against a backdrop of anxiety regarding French history painting, Moreau's mythological subject, authoritative severity of style, unmistakable elevation of moral and symbolic intentions, powerful composition, and striking originality ensured that some saw him as a possible savior of le grand art. From the outset, its critical reception was dominated by the question of archaism, a stylistic heresy that was still haunting French aesthetics. However, rather than the proto-Symbolist painting that is has so often been regarded as, Moreau conceived an anti-naturalistic, symbolic, moralizing, mythological figure composition, displaying a vigorous, ascetic male nude locked in psychological confrontation with a temptress-sphinx. The painting is at once a confessional symbol; a manifesto for his conception of a fundamentalist, “epic,” and spiritualist history painting; and a veiled polemical statement, engaging with some of the critical aesthetic and moral issues of the day, including the prostitution of high art.
