STRATEGIES OF SECRECY BEYOND “HIDING MAKING”

Oedipus and the Sphinx, the work that gave Gustave Moreau instant notoriety when it was exhibited at the Salon of 1864, and which remains the artist's best-known work, is not a powerful image because of the action it depicts. It captures the viewer with its evocation of the paralyzing power of the sphinx's riddle that is central in this trial of strength. Similarly intriguing is the name of Gustave Moreau, even though more than a century has passed since a state-run museum first made public his unparalleled bequest of a house-cumoeuvre. To some extent, this unresolved, mysterious air is related to the mythic universe of Moreau's work, inhabited by Salomes, Jasons and Medeas, androgynous poets, and all sorts of chimeras. Another factor is that of the puzzling difficulties art historians confront when attempting to classify this Parisian painter: Moreau saw himself as the renewer of the dying tradition of history painting, but was later claimed as a Symbolist, a proto-abstract painter, and the forefather of surrealism. Much of the enigma surrounding Moreau also results from a number of the artist's secretive traits, much discussed during his lifetime. The “obscurely famous” Moreau was not only noted for not allowing visitors to enter his studio and thus hiding his making; to a considerable extent, Gustave Moreau was also secretive in hiding away his creation. Joséphin (Sâr) Péladan quotes Moreau as saying that he was more jealous about the 200 works concealed in his townhouse than a caliph might be about his women. As regards women, or for that matter Moreau's private life in general, the artist seems to have been just as reticent, both during his life and in the way he prepared the memory of his own person. In order to understand Moreau's hiding and showing strategies, which were aimed at modeling his artistic persona as part of a politics of positioning himself vis-à-vis the art world, we thus need to adopt a perspective that looks beyond Moreau's tactics during his life.