“Why on earth,” a colleague asked, “would you want to write about Gustave Moreau?” The answer, I think, is plain to anyone interested in the byways of twentieth-century art; Moreau (1826–1898) is an obligatory footnote in art history texts because of his role as the teacher of Henri Matisse. (Georges Rouault and Albert Marquet were also pupils.) In the catalogue accompanying the exhibition “Gustave Moreau: Between Epic and Dream”—seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from June 1 to August 22— Douglas W. Druick, Senior Curator at the Art Institute of Chicago, writes that “Moreau’s dream of a symbolic language found its true voice” in “the joyous color, graceful arabesques, and decorative sensibilities of Henri Matisse.” The organizers of the show seek to establish Moreau as a pivotal Modernist antecedent—by linking him not only with Matisse, but also with the Symbolists, the Surrealists, and the New York School —and to move him into the ranks of the masters. They find themselves thwarted, however, by the work itself. When Druick begins his statement with a cautionary “perhaps most surprisingly,” we begin to wonder about the value he places on Moreau’s particular voice. For it is impossible to experience the art featured in “Between Epic and Dream” as anything other than kitsch: eccentric, ostentatious, and not unaccomplished kitsch, but kitsch nonetheless.

A better question is why has the Met dedicated space to such a trifling painter? Perhaps Moreau’s fin-de-siècle ambiance was felt to be resonant with our own flustered era.