Critique d'art et transposition d'art : autour de Galatée et d'Hélène de Gustave Moreau (Salon de 1880)

Gustave Moreau's Galatée and Hélène, exhibited at the Salon of 1880, attracted the attention, not only of art critics, who commented on them in long reviews, but also of poets, who sought to "transpose " them in their sonnets. But how could they translate, by verbal means, the remarkably rich plastic qualities of Moreau's paintings ? There is a close correlation between the descriptive prose of the Salon critics and the sonnets of Théodore de Banville, Jean Lorrain, Robert de Montesquiou, Henri de Régnier and Albert Samain. Confronted by the irreducible otherness of the painted surface, by the "contemplative immobility " of Moreau's figures, both prose writers and poets tend to neglect the plastic sign for the iconic sign and to exploit the narrative and psychological potential of the suggestive mythological subject.