Paintings by the late French Symbolist artist and writer Gustave Moreau are juxtaposed with the work of Modern and contemporary artists such as Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, Damien Hirst and Richard Prince, in the show Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) at Nahmad Contemporary gallery in New York (until 9 April 2016). The exhibition draws its name from a book of poems by the forefather of the Symbolist movement, the French poet Charles Baudelaire. “Moreau’s and Baudelaire’s ties to the decadent movement… reminded me a great deal of how radical the notion of art for art’s sake once was”, says Joe Nahmad, the founder of the gallery. “A focus on purely aesthetic, emotional pursuits anticipated what Modern artists would later push into a myriad of directions, and what contemporary artists take for granted, to a certain degree.”
