Finding The Ideal: Clothing And Gender In Symbolist Art

 This Major Research Project explores the role of clothing in Symbolist visual art at the end of the nineteenth century. Through a formal visual analysis of clothing in a selection of Symbolist artworks from the 1870s until the early 1900s, this research project specifically examines how clothing in Symbolist art communicates fin-de-siècle notions of gender identity. From a feminist art historical and fashion-based lens, this project investigates the female nude, the femme fatale, women in nature, and the androgyne in Symbolist visual art. Combining the analysis with Symbolism’s theories of correspondences and synthesis, this project concludes that these Symbolist representations of clothing figures communicate ideals that complicate the popular modern understanding of gender.