in Munch's use of particular compositional strategies. But, in most cases where Puvis' influence is strongest, Munch was engaged in a different type of expression--a more open (even allegorical) approach, related to his experience of French Symbolism--than in those cases where his work displays the influence of Art Nouveau or Neo-Impressionism.
This claim is premised, in part, on the fact that, Munch assimilated numerous influences that directly affected formal aspects of his work, but without adhering to a set of principles from any particular school. In doing so, however, he retained some measure of the original relationship between the form and its usage. It was the importance of Puvis to the Symbolists, as one who created forms that were inherently symbolic, that made him significant for Munch. Though it is a common claim that Symbolism was never a style, per se, Heller has shown that this is too limited a view. Those who claim that there was no Symbolic style, conceive of iconography as the unifying force behind the concept of Symbolism. In such analyses, Symbolism "is determined by such factors as the fascination with death and sexuality, with the so-called femme fatale, with hair fetishism, or with a vague sense of nostalgia wafting from the picture" (Heller "Concerning Symbolism" 147). If such themes are viewed as the thread that runs through Symbolism, the number of artists who can be included under such a term is expanded considerably.
But, the critics of the late nineteenth century who elucidated the concept of Symbolist art, clearly viewed form as an equal partner with subject matter. In the words of Maurice Denis, the distinction needed to be made between "mystical and allegorical tendencies, i.e., the search for expression by means of the subject, and symbolist tendencies, i.e., the search for expression through the work of art" (quoted in Heller "Concerning Symbolism" 148). And, according to G. Albert Au...