SONN, R. D. " French Anarchism and Cultural Politics in the 1890’s "
STEINLEIN, Théophile-Alexandre (1859-1923)Art. SymbolismArt. ImpressionismSIGNAC, Paul (1863-1935). Peintre* bibliographiePh.D., University of California at Berkeley, 1981
“…The Symbolist writers and Post-Impressionist painters who were drawn to anarchism in the early 1890s were attracted by the analogies they perceived between their aesthetic theories and libertarian ideals, but also were fascinated by the culture of the Parisian faubourgs in which the anarchists reached their largely lower-class clientele.
Popular and formal anarchist cultures were most closely conjoined in bohemian Montmartre, where not only artists and cabaret singers but every important Parisian anarchist newspaper with the exception of the left-bank La Revolte found its home.…
Toulouse-Lautrec, one of the most fervent japonistes, well represented the confluence of form, content, technique and milieu that typified fin de siecle anarchism, even though he was less ideologically anarchistic than his contemporaries Signac and Steinlen. In stressing the mutual interplay of politics and art, the ways in which artists influenced politics by interpreting terrorist acts as symbolic discourse were particularly characteristic of artists’ anarchist engagement".