Clouds of steam/smoke Symbolism

Industrial exhaust transformed into luminous atmosphere; flux, transition, and the ephemerality of modern experience.

Common Themes

The modern lens: urban life & speedMimesis vs. abstraction (truth vs. artifice)Lasting vs. fleeting (ephemerality)Public space vs. private spaceIndustrial sublime (factories, rail, steam)Revelation & epiphany

Artworks Featuring This Symbol

Gare Saint-Lazare by Claude Monet

Gare Saint-Lazare

Claude Monet (1877)

Monet’s Gare Saint-Lazare turns an iron-and-glass train shed into a theater of <strong>steam, light, and motion</strong>. Twin locomotives, gas lamps, and a surge of figures dissolve into bluish vapor under the diagonal canopy, recasting industrial smoke as <strong>luminous atmosphere</strong> <sup>[1]</sup><sup>[2]</sup>.