Decadent Spirit: French Art at the Turn of the Century

Life in Paris at the turn of the nineteenth century crackled with diverging priorities as society churned toward an unfamiliar future. Caught between the turbulent forces of restriction and liberation, artists in the fin-de-siècle, or end of the century, forged an avant-garde aesthetic that pervaded every corner of public and private life. 

France was on the precipice of a volatile spiritual and aesthetic movement, an unstable mix of the Old and the New: the epoch of modernity. It was a society experiencing rapid change, in which the tantalizing promises of the future beckoned artists toward a new era. This culture, plagued by social melees not unlike our own, produced some of the most riveting and compelling images the world had ever seen. This exhibition captures the visionary lives of the artists, muses, and socialites who shaped their world marked by spectacle, upheaval, and beauty.

Centering on the cultural production in France between 1880 and 1910, works in this exhibition highlight the exceptional aesthetic ingenuity this moment of precarity fostered. The fin-de-siècle encompassed several important art movements, including Symbolism, Decadence, the Nabis, Neo-Impressionism, and Art Nouveau. With significant objects taken from GRAM’s collection of late nineteenth century prints, as well as key loans from public and private collections, this exhibition will be held in the museum’s second floor galleries.