The interim verdict: your preferences in fine arts lie with symbolism. Symbolism emerged as the reaction to the rigid regulations and cold-blooded discretion of realism. Realists saw no mistery in the world –everything can be learned and apprehended, and things we cannot understand now will be riddled by man later.

And so they depicted this plain world by way of singling out and capturing its most typical features. The canvases convey the artist’s emotions triggered by the type, not the individual characterstics. For instance, a portrait will picture a person as a representative of a certain profession, age or social status group, rather than a unique personality. Everything peculiar, individual, that does not fall into the typical qualities is negated. The world of symbolists, on the other hand, is mysterious and incognizable. There is our reality which we observe, and there is some spiritual, hyperphysical reality that cannot be apperceived, only intuited. It is irrational and comes through our visual world in the form of symbols that one can notice and interpret solely relying upon intuition, emotions and feelings. Therefore each object, place or a person depicted in symbolist paintings, each subject, colour and the composition itself should be treated to decipher the mystical symbols, and the more obscure the painting, the more magnificent it seems. This approach led to abandoning everyday scenes or objects – and therefore still lifes, household portraits and simple landscapes are rather rare in symbolism.