Svetlov, I., Lukicheva, K. and Arias-Vikhil, M., eds. (2023). Paris around the 1900s. Joséphin Péladan’s Society of ‘Rose + Croix.’ St. Petersburg: Aleteya. (In Russ.)

Abstract

The review discusses a collection of articles produced by a team of scholars under the supervision of professor Igor Svetlov. The book focuses on alternative experiments in late 1800s — early 1900s French art, which, although they failed to grow into independent movements, succeeded in producing several interesting concepts. The study is especially concerned with the Paris-based salon of ‘Rose + Croix’ and its founder Josephin Peladan — a writer, philosopher, occultist, and an able organizer. The book considers his artistic interests and views on the connection between art and religion, the role of symbolism in artistic thought, and the relationship between the modernity of his day and the previous epochs, including the esoteric and magical traditions. The collection covers a broad variety of subjects, such as the fantastic and the demonic in Paris, the mystical components in landscape paintings of the late 1800s, illustrations in the era of decadent art, intellectualism and intuition of the regulars of Peladan’s salons, esotericism and symbolism as a bridge into otherness, the existential and the universal in 1900s’ Parisian architecture, M. Voloshin’s turn-of-the-century spiritual and aesthetic experiments, the Parisian ‘imprint’ in Kandinsky’s early works, and Paris photographed at nighttime.