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Explore the transition from Rococo to Neoclassicism and Romanticism in 18th and 19th-century art. Rococo, light-hearted and aristocratic, gave way to the serious and structured Neoclassical style before the emotional and intuitive Romantic era emerged as a counterbalance to both. Understand how these movements reflected shifting intellectual and cultural values, from reason and order to emotion and imagination.
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Rococo Art (1700-1760) • A movement in the arts in early 18thc. France • Born from the Baroque era during the Age of Enlightenment • Rococo Art was a visual representation of the optimism people felt in response to the ideas promoted by the Enlightenment – particularly new ideas about human existence
Rococo art portrayed a world of artificiality, make-believe, and game-playing. • Although less formal than Baroque Art, it was essentially an art of the aristocracy and emphasized what seem now to have been the unreflective and indulgent lifestyles of the aristocracy rather than piety, morality, self-discipline, reason, and heroism (all of which can be found in the baroque).
Essence of Rococo Art is light • The Rococo style is characterized by • pastel colors • gracefully delicate curving forms • fanciful figures • a lighthearted mood (visually and physically)
The beginning of the end for Rococo came in the early 1760s as figures like Voltaire began to voice their criticism of the superficiality and degeneracy of the art. • By 1785, Rococo had passed out of fashion in France, replaced by the order and seriousness of Neoclassicism
Neo-classical Art • Mid-18th c. to the late 19th c. • Neoclassical Art is a severe and unemotional form of art harkening back to the grandeur of ancient Greece and Rome. • Its rigidity was a reaction to the overbred Rococo style and the emotionally charged Baroque style. • The rise of Neoclassical Art was part of a general revival of interest in classical thought, which was of some importance in the American and French revolutions.
Romanticism • Around 1800, Romanticism emerged as a reaction against Neoclassicism. • It did not really replace the Neoclassical style so much as act as a counterbalancing influence…and • Many artists were influenced by both styles to a certain degree.
Many intellectual historians have seen Romanticism as a key movement in the Counter-Enlightenment, a reaction against the Age of Enlightenment. • Whereas the thinkers of the Enlightenment emphasized the primacy of deductive reason, Romanticism emphasized intuition, imagination, and feeling, to a point that led to some Romantic thinkers being accused of irrationalism.
No other intellectual/artistic movement has had comparable variety, reach, and staying power since the end of the Middle Ages. • Began in Germany – where the brothers Grimm collected popular fairy tales – and in England where local ballads were treated as high poetry • One aspect of Romanticism: the belief that products of the uncultivated popular imagination could equal or even surpass those of the educated court poets and composers who had previously monopolized the attentions of scholars and connoisseurs.
The natural consequence of dwelling on creative folk genius was a good deal of nationalism.
