Christa Giles

‘I should like,’ said Oscar throwing off the
notion at random, ‘I should like everyone on
the stage to be in yellow.’. . . ‘A violet sky,’
repeated Oscar slowly, ‘yes, I never thought
of that. Certainly a violet sky, and then, in
place of an orchestra, braziers of perfume.
Think–the scented clouds rising and partly
veiling the stage from time to time–a new
perfume for each new emotion.’ 527
205
This suggests the twentieth-century notion that colours
could be evocative by implication; that is to say, could
evoke the idea and mood of the play (or painting) without
even directly representing or referring to the play. Such
theories obviously foreshadow abstract art, and certainly
Wilde’s and Huysmans’ capacity to look at colour as
autonomous implies a step in that direction. In the light of
this it is fascinating to note that Moreau, ostensibly a
traditional painter, should, near the end of his life, make
works which were entirely non-representational. Colour no
longer had a merely descriptive function imposed on it by
the classical tradition. It should be remembered that
Moreau is the link between Romanticism and Fauvism.
Matisse, one of Moreau’s pupils, found in the Japanese
prints what the decadents had discovered before him,
specifically that: ˝One can work with expressive colours