Rococo Is Decorative and Superficial Art That Was All About the Indulgence of Upper Classes
Rococo Art: An Untold Story of the Ancien Regime
Sofia Coppola'southward 2006 masterpiece picture, Marie-Antoinette, is a veritable love letter to the Rococo art motion and the ancien regime of French elite. The plot is simplistic and historical, allowing the viewer to relish in the delights crossing the screen. The scene where Kirsten Dunst, as the titular Marie-Antoinette, and her ladies endeavor on shoes, encapsulates Rococo style. Shoes in every imaginable colour and trim pass the screen. Each looks like a petite patisserie in pastel colors. Speaking of pastries, many delectable sweeties brand an appearance. A specially notable fur-trimmed shoe appears and then very briefly a delpht blue pair, Chuck Taylor, high-height sneakers. The sneakers are an anachronism, to be sure, but their pastel hue encapsulates the era's desired palette. There are besides towers of foaming champagne, richly dyed silks, jewels, gambling, puppies, and mile-high wigs complete with ostrich plumes and birds. Before the scene ends, Dunst asks one of her attendants, "It'south not too much. Is it?!" Information technology is over-the-top and intoxicating. At its core, Rococo style is simply that, highly busy and maybe a little too much. While regarded even in its time equally light-headed, the Rococo movement mirrored European social club'south cultural underpinnings at the time.
What is Rococo?
While Rococo may sound like the call of a brightly colored, tropical bird, the mode gets its proper name from rocaille. Rocaille is an art form that uses stones and shells along with cement. The shape of the crush, in particular, is echoed beyond the genre for its curvilinear edges and undulating divots. Technically speaking, Rococo is the last frontier of the Bizarre fashion. It is sometimes called late Baroque. Rococo art appears a far cry from Caravaggio'south paintings of shadowy, penitent saints or Rubens religious scenes and large women. On the surface, Rococo gives the impression that information technology'south just not that deep.
Rococo was coined as a derogatory term in the 18th century in light of the pastel-hued, frivolous designs. Art Historians adopted the name "Rococo" and the opinion that it was silly. It would not be until much subsequently that modernistic and contemporary artists would recapture the colorful and curvy style. The Rococo influence crossed over into all genres of art. It fifty-fifty made its way into the performing arts. It also existed every bit decorative fine art: piece of furniture, glassware, and interior ornamentation. The widespread appeal of Rococo may in role be why information technology was considered "silly." Dissimilar the cracking paintings and sculptures of the era, decorative art was often the domain of female artisans and less critical.
Antoine Watteau, The Festival of Dear,via Wikimedia.
What Philosophies Lead to the Rise of Rococo Style?
Rococo art's center was in France, but the artistic style caught-on beyond the European continent and Great britain. Birds, flowers, angels, musical instruments, and far-east imagery (Chinoiserie), curves & counter curves, and interlocking ovals were all common themes in the artwork. The organic lines came from Roman antiques from sites at Herculaneum and Pompeii, respectively. Chippendale chairs, famous in England, are examples of how themes from the natural world brand their style into decorative arts with their distinctive fretwork on the backs of chairs. These embellishments and layered details recap the Rococo flow. As a cultural expression, French Rococo was an exquisite ornamental and theatrical movement that epitomizes the indulgence of the French aristocracy during the reign of King Louis.
Chippendale Chair with Lescelles Crest via Wikimedia.
The Rococo fashion petered out near the beginning of the French Revolution, where cultural critics such as Voltaire called out the type as "over-the-tiptop." Many patrons and owners of Rococo objects went to the guillotine, and the vehement justice of the Revolution led to the destruction of many of their precious and indulgent Rococo paintings and decorations. A much more than staid, patriotic style called Neo-Classicism was championed past Jacques-Louis David. His famous "Oath of the Horatii" still hangs at the Louvre Museum to this day equally an early France emblem.
While the French aristocracy was busy having a party and drinking champagne, the poor were suffering. This inequity was true in France merely as well across Europe and its colonies. The French Revolution would kick-off a generation with many uprisings and instability. Thomas Hobbes famously described life as a mutual human as "lonely, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." What a fourth dimension to be alive! And how foolish the rich's behavior must have appeared to the poor who were in a constant state of worry for their lives. Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Voltaire were in the aforementioned intellectual orbit. When one would become exiled for a fourth dimension from their nation, they would become to the other.
There was a groovy bargain of Franco-Anglo cross-pollination at the fourth dimension. Together these enfants terribles, with their unsafe ideas, came upward with new world society. Under this context, it is not surprising that many saw this movement every bit silly. Actively avoiding the poor and relishing in private wealth was and continues to be not a adept look. Rococo saw its height during King Louis XV's reign. By the time Louis Sixteen came on the scene, the style rapidly deteriorated. The concepts of freedom preached by the likes of Voltaire had finally found a foothold amid the bourgeoisie.
Portraying the Posh Instead of the Poor - Rococo Style
Rococo fine art had a strong tendency toward depicting nature in a rural, idyllic manner. Instead of a place where laborers toiled and struggled, the countryside became a storybook depiction where healthy shepherds cruel in love with tender farmer's daughters or posh people picnicked and visited sites of myth and legend. This sweet sentiment is profoundly divorced from the reality of danger and struggle between the countryside and remote villages in Europe.
Rococo painter Antoine Watteau is the spiritual male parent of the motility. He studied under Baroque artists and took his liberties to create a distinct Rococo painting style. Correggio and Rubens, titans of the Baroque, were his main influences. The scenes Watteau painted are known as fêtes galantes. It was genre painting with less didactic intentions than early on Baroque. Similar to classical art, Rococo painters incorporated allusions to artifact, such as in Watteau'due south "Pilgrimage to the Cythera." Just hither the reference to Cythera, the birthplace of Venus, is merely used to set a scene—not to cast moral aspersions upon the viewer. Sometimes Rococo artists instead alluded to contemporary performances in the theatre and ballet to set up their stage. This tendency is particularly true of Antoine Watteau and his famous "Festival of Love" which alluded to a scene from an Italian theatrical operation.
Antoine Watteau, The Pilgrimage to the Cythera" via Wikimedia.
Rococo: From Frivolous to Inflammatory
Watteau was not alone in his creation of frothy scenes. Francois Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard fine art artists took Watteau'south landscapes a step further. Boucher and Fragonard did the same just with an erotic border. Today, these images might not arm-twist blushing and feelings of shame; however, in their 24-hour interval, the images were considered quite risqué.
Boucher worked during the reign of Louis 15, at the height of French frivolity. He notably worked for Madame de Pompadour, the mistress to Louis XV. Art does sometimes imitate life. It is not surprising that the king'due south tart might want something explicit in her collection of fine art to analyze where her ability emanates. Boucher's "Toilette de Venus." This piece is emblematic of the Rococo catamenia. Notably, a scantily clad Venus lies akimbo where her body draped with luxe silks, and angels attend to her. She holds a white dove to her chest, and some other sits at her feet. The woman for whom Boucher created this was Venus personified.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard hailed from Grasse in the French maritime Alps. A perfumery that shares his proper noun however exists in that location—a faint memory of the sensuality the creative person brought to his art. Similar Boucher, Fragonard specialized in creating artwork for the petite amies of French aristocracy. He also worked with Madame du Barry and Madeline Guimard, both sometimes mistresses of King Louis XVI. A large part of the extant Fragnonard works exists in the Wallace Collection in London, England.
Baron Louis-Guillaume Baillet de Saint-Julien deputed this particular slice. He was in want of a picture of his mistress (Quelle surprise!), who is the woman pictured on the swing, playfully tossing her shoe. Her poofy merengue of a clothes barely hides the explicit undertones with which Fragonard painted the picture. Notably, y'all can see the underskirts of the woman's wearing apparel. Petticoats, while now obsolete, were considered undergarments and most definitely not for public view. So this feminine creature in the swing is effectively flashing the viewer. The tossed kitten heel sailing through the air and the swinger'southward blank pes bring the painter and viewer into the ticklish territory of sensual subject area affair. "The Swing" remains an enduring example of Rococo style. These carefree moral boundary crossings might exist why Rococo and the ambient civilisation became problematic for the masses whose crushed and colorless lives supported the frivolity of the fortunate few. The reign of King Louis XVI marked a turning point; soon after his coronation, he and his compatriots awaited their death in the Bastille. With the fall of the nobility, Fragonard and Boucher fell out of favor, as did their pleasing pastel colors and sumptuous palettes.
via Wikimedia
So, What Happens Next?
Art History compartmentalizes itself into smaller narratives. Nonetheless, none of the stories be in a vacuum. Fine art movements abut and interrupt each other and sometimes even reevaluate themselves at a later date. You cannot simply put artistic expression into a box. Every bit the French Republic found its basis, so too did art. Many masterworks of the Revolution are marked by realism and neoclassicism. Information technology would only be later that curves found their fashion back into the French visual vocabulary. After years of civil unrest and blockades, Parisienne streets were widened into large boulevards, and the curvy Hausmann way apartments began to dot the urban mural. The housing was functional but not without soft curves and decoration. Color and a dose of provocative questioning returned to the art likewise, such equally in "Tiffin Sur le Herbe" by Manet. There is a nude adult female at a picnicking party; her naked friend picks flowers in the distance. The pushing and questioning continued, and color returned with Impressionism. Loose green brushstrokes not different Fragnonard's returned to the canvas, notably Renoir and Berthe Morisot'southward works. [Morisot was the grandniece of Fragonard and the sister-in-law of the Edouard Manet as mentioned above. The art world has always been relatively small.]
Rococo and Hereafter Shock
Rococo was loud and brash and overindulgent. It was the art of a society on the brink. The class conflicts of the 17th and 18th centuries gave way to a more egalitarian manner of life in the Western world, but only thanks to a seminal period of Revolution. Despite the revolutions since the 17th century, not much has changed regarding the considerable split up betwixt the haves and take nots. What new art will this divide inspire? What image of unbridled luxury will be so powerful every bit to foment change?
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Nicole Lania is an fine art historian and writer who relishes finding genuine inventiveness in a world of thinly veiled reproductions. She earned a master'south degree from New York University with a focus on contemporary art and writing; her thesis was on the impact Christo'due south The Gates had on the cultural capital of Cardinal Park and the surrounding neighborhoods. She tin be found walking her dog, Tucker through the New England wilderness or baking pastries in her kitchen. Nicole can be institute on Instagram @nik.lania, Twitter @NicoleLania1, or her website http://world wide web.nicolelania.com/.
Source: https://perfectpicturelights.com/blog/rococo-art-of-excess
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