Rococo and Greek and Roaman Art Have in Common
one Chapter ane – Rococo through Neo-Classicism
France
Megan Bylsma
- define the terms 'Rococo', 'Enlightenment', and 'Classicism.'
- describe the Rococo style and its purpose.
- identify the philosophies of the Enlightenment.
- explain the historical basis of Neo-Classicism.
- describe the identifying characteristics of Neo-Classicism.
It is easy to await at the Rococo era as nothing more than silly, insipid rich people jubilant their wealth in the near opulent means. Which, in some function, it actually was. Nonetheless, in that location was also more going on with the Rococo and then simply "Wheee! We're rich! And lascivious!" But not by much.
It is hard to really sympathize the reality of the Rococo Era by only looking at pictures of its art. The Rococo was a full sensory experience, from how the fabric you were wearing felt and the audio it made when it moved, to the food you lot ate, the company you lot kept, the topics you talked about, the people you flirted with, the music that was played (either by you or someone else) and the way the rooms were busy while you talked and played. This was an expensive, time consuming, experiential aesthetic lifestyle. And it was a lifestyle and artful for the rich. (As nearly artful-based lifestyles are.)
The Rococo (also spelled 'Roccoco') menstruation could not take come about were it non for the earlier years of the 1700s. The absolute ability of the King of France had kept the aristocracy trapped at the Palace of Versailles, under his watchful eye, and away from their city homes in Paris. After his expiry, the elite flooded back to Paris. Happy to be free of the palace, feeling resentful for the amount of control exercised over their lives, and moving back into apartments in serious need of a decorating update due to their long absence. With all the money and time they could want at their disposal, they indulged in creating the about comfortable, exciting, and luscious surround possible.
"In the early years of the 1700s, at the end of the reign of Louis 14 (who died in 1715), in that location was a shift away from the classicism and "Grand Manner" (based on the art of Nicolas Poussin) that had governed the art of the preceding 50 years in France, toward a new style that came to exist known every bit Rococo. The Palace of Versailles (a royal chateau that was the middle of political power) was abandoned by the aristocracy, who over again took up residence in Paris. A shift away from the monarchy, toward the aristocracy characterized the art of this period.
The elite had enormous political power every bit well equally enormous wealth. Many chose leisure equally a pursuit and became involved themselves in romantic intrigues. Indeed, they created a culture of luxury and excess that formed a stark dissimilarity to the lives of most people in France. The aristocracy—only a small-scale per centum of the population of France—endemic over ninety% of its wealth. This disparity in wealth fuelled growing national discontent."
Fragonard'due south The Swing and Sexual Mores
Rococo paintings practice not oftentimes have deep pregnant or high moral reasoning. In Fragonard'sThe Swing the scene is focused on a young woman in a beautiful wearing apparel floating through the air on a swing existence pulled by her elderly hubby in the darker right hand corner. In the lower left hand corner a young man is partially curtained in the bushes, communicable a peek under the woman's skirts equally she flies over his caput. In Rococo images narrative was ofttimes embedded through the use of settings, props, and attention to where the people portrayed were focused; Rococo relied on some of the same theatrical elements that the earlier Bizarre art had likewise used. InThe Swing there are two minor cupids leaning on snail next to the elderly husband in the groundwork. They can exist seen to be a representation of the tiresome, unexciting commitment of a sedate marriage between the young woman and the older homo. This along with the dog that barks a warning from below, tin can be seen equally a reminder of fidelity and loyalty. The woman is looking at the boyfriend in the bushes below her, indicating that she is aware of his presence and is spreading her legs to beget him a amend view. Following the sweeping diagonal of her dress and foot a shoe can been seen flying off. Compositionally, this leads the painting viewer's eye to the alone cupid in the upper left hand corner who is whispering a 'shh' the young man and adult female. The solitary and secret keeping cupid can been seen to represent the secret love and adultery of the adult female and the young homo.
The story in Fragonard's The Swing is ane of flirtation, concupiscence, and infidelity; but in this painting there is no judgement or call to resistance. Martial infidelity was a common, cultural occurrence among French nobility at this time. Every bit early as the 1500s the king of France had a mistress as part of his court. The title given to the woman in this position was maîtresse-en-titre and this semi-official position came with ability and apartments at the palace (whereas a petite maîtresse was an unacknowledged, completely unofficial mistress to the king). Therefore it is not strange that by the 1700s i t was expected that every married man of means would keep at to the lowest degree one mistress. The keeping of m istresses was but function of the mode of life for the upper classes in French republic at this time – all the wealthy men had them and all the women knew near them. Paintings, like The Swing, that celebrated, normalized, and fabricated lite of the moral decadence of the ruling classes added fuel to the burn of the Enlightenment. Those that called for social and moral reforms used examples of art similar this to call gild to a searching for their moral fiber and to value heroism and duty over self-indulgence and avarice.
Boffrand'southward Le salon de la Princesse and Seeds of Dissent
Rococo compages and interior design were as indulgent and over the top as the paintings of the time. This salon was created for a new, young, wife in a metropolis mansion located at 60 rue des Francs-Bourgeois, in Paris. The gilted and highly decorated interior highlighted here was not an unusual feature for Rococo interiors. Integrated wall paintings similar those in the spaces between the window arches near the ceiling, were popular – as were silk wall coverings punctuated with easel paintings.
This integrated painting is a series of paintings in the alcoves in this room that relate the story of Eros and Psyche. Now remember that these paintings would be seen in either daylight, or more than frequently, as this was a room for entertaining guests, by candlelight. Seen in microscopic singular detail, as is often the case with digital viewing in the 21st century, these paintings seem odd and over the top. Simply in situ, in the ambience of candlelight reflecting off of glass, mirrors and gold, information technology would take seemed quite in keeping with the tastes of the day. The selection of this story of Psyche on the alcoves is interesting because it is the love story of the human Psyche and the god Eros. In this story, Psyche is a cute human who, after a series of misadventures, is the object of the god Eros' affections. Eros had been given the task of destroying Psyche, simply instead he had fallen in dear with her and knew that to keep their honey a secrete from Aphrodite, Psyche must never come across his face. Notwithstanding, she eventually sneaks a peek during the nighttime and Eros immediately leaves her. After much sad seeking of her dear, Psyche asks Aphrodite for help and is given dangerous tasks to complete. In the end, she is rescued by Eros, who asks Zeus to allow Psyche into the pantheon of gods and demi-gods so that their dear is no longer forbidden and to appease the anger of Aphrodite. When Psyche is elevated to Mount Olympus, she and Eros alive happily ever after. This story is considered to be one of the starting time and few fairytale like stories from Greek myth, simply information technology has an interesting moral that can be argued from the story. As Petra 10-Doesschate Chu explains in her volume Nineteenth-century European Art, to use the story of Psyche and Eros seems similar a lovely love story in keeping with the flirtatious expectations of the Rococo. Yet, this particular dearest story may have too seen as a story about questioning dominance and rebelling confronting the absolute rule (as the nobles had just been released from Versaille by the death of Rex Louis the Fourteen) and bending the will of the ruler to that of the ruled. Just as the moral of the story of Psyche and Eros is deeply hidden and really only a small cistron in the overall message of the story so the questioning of authority was only a glimmer of a growing idea in the minds of the French people at this fourth dimension.
Even the smallest of glimmering flames can be fanned into a raging fire, though. Fed up with the self-indulgent and self-congratulating commemoration of the bourgeoisie, the seeds of the Enlightenment were planted.
The fact that i section ended and some other began in this resources would make it seem like the Rococo era concluded and was succeeded dramatically past the Age of Reason, but in reality the Rococo and the Enlightenment sort of melded one into the other. In the fancy, rich interiors of Rococo extravagance there were dinner parties with witty, rich, and intelligent people having conversations and questioning say-so. As these conversations grew more than strident and the thoughts become more than clearly formed people similar the philosophers of the eighteenth century – Voltaire, Diderot, d'Alembert – came to believe that reason, logic, and duty were the only things that would save humanity from its own decadence.
Madame de Pompadour
This portrait of Madame de Pompadour – the male monarch'southward leading mistress – shows her with books, papers, and music – a nod to her intelligence, 'skilful taste' and patronly generosity. Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise of Pompadour – aka Madame de Pompadour – used her position in the purple court to shrewdly wield her influence for the arts and other intellectual endeavours. Maurice Quentin de La Tour'due south portrait of Madame de Pompadour surrounded by books, including a re-create ofEncyclopédie, was an acknowledgement of her role in the intellectual undertaking of the first 'Encyclopédie', or what nosotros now refer to, in English, as an Encyclopedia. It was to be a compendium of illustrated knowledge that encompassed everything known to the intellectuals at the time – from equus caballus tack to liturgical seasons. Madame de Pompadour became its protector as rival intellectuals from the French Academy and high ranking members of the Catholic Church, including Archbishop of Paris Christophe de Beaumont and Pope Clement XIII, were quite against the undertaking as some of the articles in it were quite provoking.[1] Due to Madame de Pompadour'south diplomatic interventions the Encyclopédie was completed and published (although it was placed on the listing of banned books by Pope Clement).
Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise of Pompadour is an excellent instance of the dual existence of Rococo backlog and Enlightenment intellect. Madame de Pompadour was the official mistress to the king – a function she received by calculated and direct flirtation with him. She attended salons where nutrient, talk, music, and wit flowed. She hosted grand parties and redecorated her many dwellings oftentimes and opulently. She held even greater power in the king's courtroom once she received the title of lady-in-waiting to the Queen of France. She lavished coin and favours on those she deemed worthy; she removed those that disappointed her from their positions. Her influence was felt especially in the arts and other realms of intellectual pursuit. She was an also an creative person after a mode, although some debate whether her work was really her own, or a collaboration with the artists she championed.[2] She learned how to engrave gemstones from the rex'south own engraver, Jacques Guay and learned printmaking from François Boucher, a member of the French Royal University of Painting and Sculpture.[3] Boucher created a series of drawings of pieces past Guay that Madame de Pompdour engraved and printed.
The Academy, the Salon, & the Critic
This is an artist'south rendering of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture'south Salon of 1765 – exhibitions like this were extremely of import to the art world. The public came in crowds to run into the new art and artists' careers were dependent on being accepted into the Salon shows. However, this also had a stifling effect on creativity equally the Salon juries and the Academy controlled what kind of art and subject were accepted. If a manner or subject was not pop with the University information technology would either be denied entry to the Salon, or it would be hung in a identify where it would be easily overlooked. The term 'Salon hang' comes from the manner art was arranged at these shows; considering the shows were popular, art was hung side-by-side and side by side to each other, about flooring to ceiling. The spaces not taken up past paintings of all sizes were filled with sculptures, and by contemporary standards the final product was a very cluttered and overwhelming brandish space where things could be easily missed by a viewer enveloped in a crowd.
The Academy controlled what art was accepted and where art pieces were hung – if the creative person was a watercolour creative person (watercolour was considered inferior and not good enough for finished works of fine art or was left to hobbyists and female artists) who managed to get into the Salon with a smaller sized piece of work, the piece of work was probable to be 'skied' or hung up at the acme where the huge historical genre paintings were hung – so no one saw information technology anyway. Ironically, much of the documentation of the Academy Salons was in the grade of watercolour works, like this slice past Gabriel-Jacques de Saint-Aubin.
Eventually, the University Salon shows gave rise to the creation of the art critic. Completely accepted as a form of journalism, art critique was mutual in the journals, pamphlets, and newspapers from the mid-18th-century on. Almost immediately, art critics began to complaining the state of fine art being created (somethings never exercise change). These critics condemned the decadence and sensual self-indulgence that was evident in the artwork. Of course, the artists hated the critics for daring to critique their work. Artists at that point were not used to be criticized considering until the emergence of the fine art critic the fact that their fine art had been chosen to be showcased in an Academy exhibition proved that their art was function of unquestionable and unchallenged strata of artistic work. To question the value, bulletin, or technique of the art in the Academy exhibition was similar critiquing the University! The Academy was formed by the male monarch and run past aristocratic members of society, therefore questioning the art they canonical was like questioning the king himself (in the minds of those who managed the University and its artists). Artists who had had the fortune of beingness sheltered inside the University shows had only had to deal with critique and dramatic snobbery from withing the cultural structure of the University itself. The exterior judgement of the critic-in-the-press was an unwelcome source of insubordinate animosity. Thus began a long and complicated relationship between the established, main stream controller of fine art (the Academy), the creative person, and the critic.
One particularly hated critic was Étienne La Font de Saint-Yenne. He was aghast at the level of decay and self-appreciation in the fine art and wrote works that called artists to abandon the frivolous, erotic themes of the Rococo art market and pursue themes of dignity and calm grandeur. He challenged artists to put abroad their sensuous colours, self-congratulating virtuoso brush work, and arousing asymmetrical compositions, and to find inspiration in Classical Greek and Roman art. La Font de Saint-Yenne felt that it was the correct and duty of all intellectuals to challenge decadence when they saw it and he was not popular with the artists that he wrote virtually. Because the human relationship between art critic and artist was very new at this time, many artists felt that a author had no correct to critique or judge visual arts in anyway. Judging the creative person that had been accepted into an Academy Salon was alike to criticizing the Royal Academy – one of the king's appointed power-brokers of cultural influence – and the French art globe found the change to be a difficult adjustment.
Values of the Enlightenment
Denis Diderot, a philosopher and one of the editors of the Encyclopédie, took upward the cry for artists to cover noble, edifying, and intellectual sentiment based themes as well. Diderot admired works like Jean-Baptiste Greuze'due south Filial Piety, for its reality and laurels and sense of duty. Diderot praised Greuze's work for showing non-upper class people living real, flawed lives with a noble sense of endurance. In this piece, the patriarch of the family commands attention and reverence from all, including the family pet, fifty-fifty from his sick bed and all members of the family respect and intendance for him. This is an prototype that is neither dramatic, nor sensual. It showcases and celebrates the calm dignity and noble service of respectful and dutiful family.
Which isn't to say that Greuze didn't accept his own collection of near pornographic Rococo paintings and portraits, but by this time his work was frequently championing the same things that Diderot's writing valued – virtuous examples and 18-carat sentiment mixed into gimmicky realities.
The philosophers of the Enlightenment devised a social antitoxin to the ills of the Rococo. They felt moral reform and a return to the what they perceived were the values of the ancient Greeks and Romans were the only hope. The main values of the Enlightenment tin can be generalized as follows:
- dignity (noble action and attitude, non noble birth)
- calm grandeur
- edification (the instruction or comeback of a person morally or intellectually)
- virtuous character
- 18-carat sentiment
- intellectual development
- reality
- accolade
- duty
However, the aristocracy, who and so liked their naughty pictures were also buying these noble paintings and supporting this change in the arts. It is articulate that Rococo sensibilities weren't killed off of a sudden as Enlightened ethics took over. Instead, the fashions simply co-existed with one another until one became more pop and sparked an initiative for drastic alter.
And so the Enlightenment gradually came to exist.
The art that is often seen as the epitome of the philosophies of the Enlightenment really owes but every bit much to the ideas of the Classical Paradigm.
Fine art in the mid-1700s, equally seen in the Rococo style, was suffering from a case of death-by-excess, or decadence. It was fluffy and frilly and self-serving and some people felt that information technology was showing how club at the time was the same. The Enlightenment called for noble, edifying fine art that could repair the moral fabric of the nation. But this also meant looking for new role-models in art aesthetics. Looking to Baroque and Rococo artists for a guide would only atomic number 82 to more cotton fiber candy lack-of-substance, looking to Michelangelo or the Renaissance artists would non pb to purity of intention or virtuousness since they as well came from a flawed time and the great artists of the Renaissance received their inspiration from the Greeks. Scholars began to fence that the peak of western club was age of the Greeks and thus the fine art of the 1700s should look to Homer, Plato and the Greek artists for pure and culturally untainted inspiration.
The literary work of Johann Joachim Winckelmann – Reflections on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture, 1756 – called to imitate what was thought as a nobler, healthier and more fulfilling time. Winckelmann was ane of the leading scholars at the time arguing this was the right mode to look at reviving morality in civilisation.
This new kind of Classicism (Neo-Classicism) was more just looking dorsum to Grecian ideals. It was nearly finding ethics, purified of every imperfection – which while the Greeks also looked for what they chosen the 'ideal', was a different kind of ideal. When ancient the aboriginal Greeks looked to create an ideal grade they were were looking to render to the ideal generic thing that was created at the kickoff of the world; agreement that the first tree, animals, and humans created were the perfect and ideal specimen of each affair every bit considered ideal for their role by the gods. Therefore, if an ancient Greek artist found they had re-created perfection they could simply continue copying that as a form because in that location would never be a ameliorate version. In Grecian times, Polykleitos' Spear Bearer, was considered perfectly platonic or 'canon,' and was therefore a rule of class that all others should follow. Yet, an artist couldn't just create a unmarried perfect figure and use information technology in all situations. Each ideal was home to its ain ideals and narrative. For case, Polykleitos' figure would accept been a perfect athlete, a perfect young male (simply not youth), and a perfect warrior, but the figure could never have been used to relay ideas of wisdom, historic period, or femininity. For those ideals a different platonic form was required. To the French in the 1700s the idea of 'ideal' didn't have the aforementioned connotations of being related to the divine original copy of creation. It was more than closely related to our gimmicky understanding of platonic – something that is perfect, and united nations-improvable. However, the French scholars did feel that a Greek ideal would exist closest to a cultural ideal of intelligence, strong graphic symbol, and civic duty.
Pompeii and Herculaneum were re-discovered around 1599, while the first archaeological excavations began in 1764. Winckelmann was one of the scholars heavily influenced by this discovery, and he, as most other scholars, was sorely disappointed when he realized that the murals they found at Pompeii and Herculaneum did not live up to the preconceived ideas of what Greco-Roman art must take been. At Pompeii and Herculaneum the art varied from technically perfect to crudely rendered with subject thing that ran from the beneficial to the scandalous. Much of what was establish there did not reflect a society that was perfect, good for you, and untainted by the vagaries of moral decay. In reaction to this discovery, Winckelmann hypothesized a developmental model for societies that has been applied to Greek and Roman art and culture ever since. His theory was that art in Greece and Rome must accept had a life-wheel like that of a living creature; a birth, flourishing, prime, decay, and expiry arch. He explained, based on this theory, that the Classical Greek period was the high indicate. It had a primitive kind of learning period at the start of its life that flourished and grew into a loftier eye point that eventually decayed and grew stagnant and self-indulgent with the Roman period that built on the weakened ruins of the previous society.
This model continues to exist the 'canon' of art history equally it continues to exist taught into the 21st century. Written in 1764, The History of Ancient Art put forward that idea and it has stuck to this day. It is challenging, though not impossible, to find whatever scholarly theories of the development of Greek and Roman fine art and culture that is not based on the model of a rudimentary offset, perfected heart and over-indulgent end. However, this is an area that may crave intense scrutiny as contemporary scholars have realized that how the art of the Greeks and Romans were viewed in the 1700s is not a representation of how the Greeks and Romans viewed their own cultural output.
When Winckelmann and his associates saw the marbles of the ancient Greeks and Romans, they saw them in their weathered and unpreserved states; weathered down to their raw marble foundations. The scholars of the 1700s accepted these sculptures equally pieces that would have been presented in their raw white form because they were familiar with sculptures from the Renaissance, which were revered for their pristine white marble surfaces.
The sculptors of the Renaissance had likewise been influenced past the white Greek and Roman sculptures they had seen. The reality was that a white marble sculpture was merely a myth told by the harsh realities of time. Originally, ancient Greek sculptures were painted in bright colours and presented with an aesthetic that would have made the Neo-Classicists (and continues to make some present day people) quite uncomfortable.
This makes it clear that the foundations of Neo-Classicism were congenital on misinformed judgments regarding aboriginal cultures. However, the philosophers and scholars of 1700 France felt that change was needed in their gild and then they looked back to a culture they believed to be better than their own. This combination of looking dorsum to the 'ideal' era to find the 'ideal' style of communicating more edifying ideals and noble graphic symbol gave nativity to what nosotros know as Neo-Classicism. Notwithstanding, the most famous works of fine art of the New Classical Era or Neo-Classical are also shown every bit examples of the Enlightenment because they really were doing double duty. Yet, this doesn't mean that every painting of the Enlightenment was a Neo-Classicist piece of work. Neo-Classical works were only ones that showed Greco-Roman themes and stories every bit a way of relaying a narrative of Enlightenment values, while Enlightenment works showed the values of the Enlightenment through a many narrative and aesthetic means.
Jacques-Louis David was i of the outset, and at present most famous, artists to combine the classical ideal of Neo-Classicism with the high ideals of the Enlightenment. Works similar Oath of the Horatii testify duty existence chosen over emotion and nobility of character triumphing over cocky-fulfillment.
This painting showcases the moment when the sons of the Horatii family unit pledge honor and allegiance earlier engaging in a bloody battle. In the story of the Horatii of Rome versus the Curaitii of Alba there are much more than dramatic and exciting moments than is shown here, merely David chose to depict this moment of calm logic and sense of civic duty triumphing over emotion and self-preservation. The brusque version of story goes like this:
Information technology is a story set in early Roman history. There is a border dispute between Alba and Rome. Rather than having a war with great cost to both sides, this dispute was solved by a duel betwixt three men from Alba and three men from Rome – the finest swordsmen of each city-land. The 3 brothers from the Roman Horatii family were selected to fight the iii brothers from the Alban Curiatii family. Still, Sabina (the woman in blue and gilded in the painting) – a Curiatii sister – was married to 1 of the Horatii brothers, while Camilla (the woman in white) – a Horatii sister – was engaged to 1 of the Curiatii boys. Either way this story was never going to have a happy ending for the women. In David'southward painting the men with their strong silhouetting against the darkness of the background, their straight lines, and flexed muscles show the strength of resolve and the calm grandeur of noble cede. However, the women, depicted in curving shapes, crumpled in grief, and trying to shield the children from the reality of death are shown as the character foil of the weakness of emotion, self-service, and inability to sacrifice for the reality of the circumstances.
(To end the story: The Romans won the duel but only one Horatii blood brother came back. Camilla cursed her brother for the expiry of her fiancé and he flew into a rage and killed her. The finish.)
Jacques-Louis David'southward The Decease of Socrates is ofttimes talked about as a prophesy of the coming French Revolution. One where Socrates is dying for an platonic of society that was perceived of as a threat by those in dominance and this image is an allegory of those sacrifices coming in but 2 years. However, that isn't how it would take been seen at the fourth dimension and David could never have predicted where his land would have gone over the course of the decade. Hither Socrates, calmly the embodiment of the eternal soul, is reminding his followers of the immortality of the soul while his followers embody the physical side of expiry with their fear. David chose to recreate this scene by departing from the historical record of this event and creating a scene that fit his ideals more than closely. Despite that, this piece, along with theAdjuration of the Horatii,is considered part of the quintessential Neo-Classical genre.
Consider the following questions:
- Exercise you think the contemporary globe that nosotros live in now is experiencing something similar France during the Rococo/Enlightenment transition?
- Or practise you experience there is no correlation between the societal attitudes in the 1700s in France and the societal attitudes of today?
- Do you lot think that the proliferation of 'First World Problem Memes' and 'Back In The 24-hour interval' stories is a sign of a kind of rebellion confronting a Rococo-esque self indulgence in our club?
- Or do you find that the society nosotros alive in is not relatable to the ideas of the 1700s?
- No matter which opinion you take, how would you contend your position with someone who disagreed?
Source: https://openeducationalberta.ca/19thcenturyart/chapter/chapter-1/
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