Философско-эстетическое мировосприятие французских символистов конца XIX - начала XX в. как художественный способ познания мира

Abstract

The paper justifies the thesis that ideological and artistic attitudes that determined the subject and morphology of creative work of the French symbolist painters of the turn of the XIX-XX centuries had ancient non-European roots. The author advances a well-grounded hypothesis that symbolist painters’ esoteric worldview was based on ancient gnostic doctrines, which constitutes scientific originality of the study. The conducted research allows concluding that, having followed the gnostic tradition, symbolist painters explored different aspects of a symbol as an art object, which implements a certain ideological and artistic conception and serves as an ethical ideal.