Art Criticism - The State University of New York

ing her as the femme fatale, or substituting her for artifice, was the consequence.
The theme of Oedipus and the Sphinx (1864) obviously springs from
the literature of the period, as summarized by Edouard Schure: "Since time
immemorial, Nature, seductive, inscrutable, is the queen of man. Nature, symbolized
by the Sphinx, eventually is outwitted by man and plunges into the
abyss. Thus, nature penetrated in the hierarchy of her forces is defeated by
man who incorporates and surpasses her in thinking."25 In this light, Oedipus
and the Sphinx may be interpreted as the pictorial representation ofthe Dandy's
decadent attempt to assert his superiority over the laws of nature. (Which,
ironically, is what modern scientific materialism wants to do).
While they may exude sensuality and eroticism, Moreau's female
figures are also cold and cruel and ultimately inaccessible - they are the forbidden
(and ultimately undesirable) fruit. A virile artist responds to women in a
directly sexual way, and the representation of individual women as untouchable
goddesses is indicative of a somewhat warped female ideal. The figure of
woman is utterly fascinating because of the paradox she embodies; she is ::tt
once symbolic not only of nature, but of its antithesis, artifice. Huysmans'
narrative describes Salome thus:
... on the moist skin of her body glitter clustered diamonds; from
bracelets, belts, rings, dart sparks offire; over her robe of triumph,
bestrewn with pearls, broidered work, each mesh of which is a
precious stone, seems ablaze with coiling fiery serpents, crawling
and creeping over the pink flesh like gleaming insects with dazzling
wings of brilliant colors, scarlet with bands of yellow like the
dawn, with patterned diapering like the blue of steel, with stripes
of peacock green. 26
Salome dazzles, not because of her extraordinary bodily beauty, the
body accorded to her by nature, but because of the lapidary wonders in which
she is clad. Indeed one might posit that Moreau has not created a woman, but
a work of art disguised as a woman and symbolizing all that spells the destruction
of the male. Artificiality usurps Nature. In a similar synesthetic manner,
des Esseintes became his own work of art, honed by his hyper-aestheticism
and his disorientation between the real and the imaginary. The work of art is
beyond death and common human frailty and defies Nature's transience.
The product of Moreau's warped female ideal, embodied in the figure
of Salome, fascinated Des Esseintes, and he was spellbound by the "charms
and active allurements of the dancer."27 He regarded her as "weird and superhuman,"
simultaneously "the dancing harlot of all times," and the "thoughtful,
solemn almost reverent" virgin dancing wantonly before Herod. 28 She fulfills
his impossible ideal of virgin and whore. This unreal, cold, erotic sensuousness
recurs throughout Moreau's work in Samson and Delilah (1881-82),
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Art Criticism