Interculturality on Canvas – Collages of Religions and Cultures in the Oeuvre of Gustave Moreau

Abstract

Using the oeuvre of the French artist Gustave Moreau as an example, it will be shown how the French culture of the second half of the 19th century and the art of Symbolism adopted and depicted themes and motifs taken from Eastern cultures and religions, how they incorporated them into their own cultural pat terns and what roles they assigned to them. Such “borrowings” are considered one of the basic features of Moreau’s work, which is generally cited as a good example of the interculturality of that period. The paper will highlight the intentional mistakes that the painter made in his paintings and explain the idea of erasing clear boundaries between cultural contents and their deliberate mixing within a single work.