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SYNTHETISM
SYNTHETISM
2018–
ON GOING
Synthetic Mountain Series
Part of the project Parallel Avant-Gardes
This series is part of Parallel Avant-Gardes, a broader project that reconstructs forgotten or failed aesthetic movements as if they had fully materialized. Here, Synthetism is not treated as a historical curiosity but reimagined as a living, pictorial philosophy—a method to fuse perception, sensation, and form into a unified visual field.
I build each painting through layers of oil glaze, allowing memory and intuition to slowly sediment. The mountain serves not as a motif to represent, but as a structure to synthesize. These works speculate from the past yet operate in the present: they ask what painting might have become had other aesthetic lineages prevailed.
Originally proposed in 1901 by Jean de La Hire in his manifesto Le roman synthétique, Synthetism called for a radical integration of imagination, sensation, and soul. It rejected the narrow logic of naturalism, the excesses of romanticism, and the detachment of symbolism—seeking instead to fuse their strengths into a totalizing and profoundly human practice.
Through the Synthetic Mountain Series, I translate this vision into vibrant compositions where the real and the imagined, the immediate and the eternal, coexist. These paintings don’t reproduce landscapes—they resonate with them. They aim to capture what the mountain whispers in silence: its echo, its rhythm, its soul.
In an age of fragmentation and polarization, Synthetism becomes a form of resistance—a call for wholeness. It is not just an aesthetic stance but an ethical one: a belief that art can be a space of reconciliation, where contradictions are not erased but embraced.
This is my Synthetism: a bridge between realities, a space where painting becomes philosophy, and where form becomes a language for what cannot be said otherwise.
Long flames set the sky ablaze with streams of yellow gold and red copper. Below, the mountain was black, massive, and its details could not be distinguished. Small white clouds drifted toward the point where the star had just disappeared and gradually turned into waves of purple that evaporated into golden vapors. To enjoy the contrast, Jean turned his head and looked at the sea. In the distance, up to the horizon, it was a clear silver beneath the pale blue of the sky. Then, little by little, it darkened, turning a grayish blue, and then blacker: clouds ran, gathered, and the line of the horizon could no longer be seen.
Le vice provincial by Jean de La Hire, 1902.
THE SYNTHETIC NOVEL
By Jean de La Hire
The Synthesis
Thousands of books are published every month, yet none, save for rare exceptions, contain an original idea or stand out for their form. Naturalism is out of fashion; symbolism was no more than a failure, and now there is no direction for those aspiring to the noble profession of letters.
Amid this disarray, I have found it useful to observe and record here the new trends in literature and what should be our conduct to create good, original, artistic works that meet the new desires of the public and the secret hopes of scholars.
First, let us be completely truthful.
Naturalism, too narrow and exclusive, distorted the magnificent realist idea of its initiator, Flaubert, and was destroyed by its own excesses. Symbolism—in the profound sense of that splendid word—was lost in obscurity.
Idealism died of its insipidness. Having stirred too much mud, the public now feels the need for elevated aspirations; having wandered through romanticism and darkness, it has a vehement desire to return to the light—a light broad, pure, vibrant, and complete—that reveals life as it is, with its grandeur and virtues, as well as its smallness and vices.
Just as romanticism erred by being overly sentimental and picturesque, naturalism erred by focusing solely on life’s ugliness and brutality, while symbolism and idealism erred by only seeing dreams.
After these literatures of pure imagination, pure sensation, and pure soul, there is room for a literature that combines within itself the dispersed qualities of the others and thus achieves synthesis.
It is also false to claim that the public demands melodramatic and sensual fare or that truth lies solely in crimes, vulgarities, and petty passions. The works of Balzac, Dickens, George Eliot, and Tolstoy stand as proof: true and profoundly human, they contain virtues as much as flaws. Why make love and passion the core of almost every novel? Numerous examples show that great works can exist without love. L'Abbé Tigrane by Ferdinand Fabre, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller and A Simple Heart by Flaubert, The Evangelist by Alphonse Daudet are not love stories, yet they are magnificent works of art. Life is not solely made up of love, and since the novel represents life, there can be great novels that portray warriors, merchants, travelers, sociologists, and not just lovers. If a writer’s temperament inclines them toward love as a subject, does not morality in love form part of life’s truth? It is essential to rise nobly above the wave of vulgarity that floods bookstore windows. The naturalists claimed to reflect truth, but many of them merely reflected vulgarity. . The love depicted in The Princess of Cleves, Paul and Virginia, Eugenie Grandet, and The Lily of the Valley is not sinful. Is it less true because it is pure? There are still chaste young women and honest women; there is no reason why art should focus solely on depraved children or corrupt women. However, I do not suggest that we should only portray virtuous women and upright men. Life has a thousand facets: conceal none, and your work will be genuinely human if, instead of focusing on a single aspect, you strive to represent them all: the good and the bad, the vile and the chaste, the sad and the joyful, the ridiculous and the sublime, the great and the small. Take from the masters that which makes them original: from Chateaubriand, the color, the movement, the harmony, and the sentiment; from Flaubert, the material descriptive sense; from Balzac, Dickens, and Tolstoy, the sense of compassion for humanity. By uniting in your work the imagination of the romantics, the sensation of the realists, and the soul of the psychologists and idealists, you will be completely human, entirely truthful, synthetic. The new literature must absorb the past literatures; it must be, and will be, synthetic, like life itself. Writing with clarity, strength, and harmony, avoiding vulgarity and excess, always seeking balance between form and content, emotion and observation, will lead to this synthesis, the supreme goal of art. By Jean de La Hire, 1901 Le roman synthétique: La synthèse. La décentralisation. Le mépris du Vulgaire
SYNTHETISM
By Florian Parmentier
In the same year of 1901, a third school emerged: Synthetism.
Mr. Charles Morice had already developed this idea: “The great destiny of poetry is to suggest the whole of man through all of art... The new poetry must achieve the synthesis of the forces acquired over three centuries of labor.”
Building upon this declaration, Mr. Jean de la Hire would adopt it as the principle of his doctrine.
In July, the first issue of his magazine, L'Idée Synthétique, co-directed with Mr. Paul Yaki, was published. In it, he immediately protested against the "vulgarization" of art, which, according to him, had become a threat following the theories promoted by "social poets." For him, “a work of art is one that awakens in us, simultaneously, realities, dreams, and feelings. It must be synthetic like life.” This blend of realities, dreams, and feelings is not characteristic of vulgarity, just as a "vulgarized" art could not maintain the richness necessary to offer the synthesis of so many superior elements.
The synthetist manifesto appeared as the prologue to a novel by Mr. Jean de la Hire, Le Vice Provincial. “In human beings,” it asserts, “the classics studied only the soul, the romantics, the sentiment, and the realists, the sensation... In each case, it is an incomplete fraction of life... Synthesis must employ the three agents of analysis together and proceed according to the logical consequences of this fusion.”
In response to some criticisms suggesting that the new technique was merely a recipe for the "assimilation of authors," as had already been advocated by Mr. Albalat, Mr. de la Hire vehemently rejected such an interpretation: “Literary Synthesis,” he replied, “is no more an assimilation of authors than the color white, for example, is all the colors of the solar spectrum, even though it is formed by their fusion.”
In summary, what Mr. de la Hire demands is no longer a work whose heroes are subordinated to the various environments studied, but rather, once again, a logical work, “analytical in its details and synthetic in its whole—a panorama of life.”
Florian Parmentier, La Littérature à l'époque; histoire de la littérature française de 1885 à nos jours, Paris, 1914, pp. 136-138.
SYNTHETISM : AN AESTHETIC AND ETHICAL REVOLUTION FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
In a world marked by fragmentation, polarization, and disconnection, Synthetism reemerges as a powerful response—not just as an artistic practice, but as an aesthetic and ethical position. It proposes a new language for our time, one that unites imagination, sensation, and soul into a cohesive experience that transcends categories, styles, and epochs.
Rather than offering beauty as a commodity, Synthetist works create transformative experiences. They resist superficiality and spectacle, inviting the viewer into a space of reflection, emotion, and inner resonance. Each painting becomes a microcosm where complexity is not dissolved but integrated—where chaos and harmony, realism and abstraction, cohabit.
Synthetism does not seek to impose a singular vision of the world. Instead, it opens space for plurality and coexistence, embracing contradiction as a creative force. It reclaims the power of art to inspire empathy, challenge dominant narratives, and propose alternative ways of being.
In times of ecological, political, and social crises, Synthetism becomes a call for reconciliation—between past and future, form and spirit, tradition and experimentation. It sees history not as a burden, but as a reservoir for potential futures. By avoiding the extremes of brutal realism, romantic excess, or detached formalism, Synthetism offers balance as a form of resistance.
More than a style, Synthetism is a manifesto for living and creating in complexity. It imagines art not as a mirror or escape, but as a space of synthesis—where realities, dreams, and emotions converge to show us that wholeness is still possible, and that art, like life, is a continuous act of renewal.
SHYNTETIC POEMS
By Syd Krochmalny
The Symphony of Light and Color
Beneath the vast expanse of cerulean sky, a mountain dreams in kaleidoscopic hues, its peaks a chorus of bold, vibrant whispers. Here, the earth does not simply rise; it dances. It shatters the monotony of stone and soil, weaving a tapestry of infinite shades—rose, emerald, cobalt, and gold—like fragments of a forgotten prism scattered across its surface.
The mountain is alive, not with the pulse of the ordinary, but with the rhythm of the extraordinary. Its slopes cascade like painted rivers, flowing into pools of color that defy logic and embrace wonder. Each hue sings a note, together creating a melody only the soul can hear—a hymn to creation itself, to the beauty of chaos distilled into harmony.
There are no shadows here, only the gentle embrace of light, refracted and reimagined into forms that suggest and conceal. The mountain tells no singular story; instead, it offers endless tales to those who dare to look deeply. Is it a reflection of the world, or a vision of the one we long for?
In this painted universe, the boundaries between the seen and the unseen blur. The mountain becomes a mirror to our own yearning, a reminder that life is more than the tangible—it is a symphony of sensations, an ever-shifting palette where the real and the imagined converge.
Selected Bibliography: LITERATURE SHYNTETIC (1901)
Primary Sources
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Jean de La Hire, Le roman synthétique: La synthèse. La décentralisation. Le mépris du Vulgaire. Paris: Éditions de la Revue Synthétique, 1901. Foundational manifesto of literary Synthetism. Advocates for a fusion of imagination, sensation, and soul, rejecting naturalism, sentimentalism, and formalism.
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Jean de La Hire, Le vice provincial. Paris: Flammarion, 1902. A novel that exemplifies the synthetist method—proposed as a “panorama of life,” combining psychological, emotional, and sensory registers.
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L’Idée Synthétique (1901), edited by Jean de La Hire and Paul Yaki. Short-lived periodical that served as a platform for the articulation and defense of the Synthetist vision against the vulgarization of literature.
Secondary Sources
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Florian Parmentier, La Littérature à l'époque: histoire de la littérature française de 1885 à nos jours. Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 1914, pp. 136–138 Provides one of the few historical mentions of Synthetism as a literary school. Valuable for understanding its reception and marginalization.
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Charles Morice, selected essays and critiques (1890s–1900s). Though not a synthetist himself, Morice’s notion that “the new poetry must synthesize the forces acquired over three centuries” deeply influenced La Hire.
Contextual Readings:
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Gustave Flaubert, Trois Contes (especially Un cœur simple).
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François-René de Chateaubriand, Mémoires d’outre-tombe.
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Honoré de Balzac, La Comédie humaine.
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Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich and What Is Art? Referenced by La Hire as models of realism, emotional precision, and humanism to be fused into the synthetic method.
EXHIBITIONS
Unconcious Waves
BARRO EAST HAMPTONS
JULY 2024
PRESS & ESSAYS
Anna Mikaela Ekstrand
June 29, 2024
Cultybytes
Parallel Vanguards
Syd Krochmalny
8 feb 2025
Jennifer
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