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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

Decadence and Dark Dreams: Belgian Symbolism

Sept 18, 2020 – Jan 17, 2021
Bodestraße 1-3, 10178 Berlin, Germany

The Symbolist Movement of the late-19th century has been the subject of many shows, but never with a focus on Belgian symbolism. Dreams and magic, Eros and Thanatos, the morbid and the decadent—the Belgian symbolists took the movement to a darker place, spectral, voluptuous, and full of femme fatales. A long overdue exhibition explores the key figures of Belgian symbolism. —E.C.

James Ensor, “The Skeleton Painter,” Detail, 1896 © Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, Art in Flanders / Hugo Maertens.