ART OF THE ROCOCO – CHAPTER 28, pp797-803
Vocabulary: fete galante, hotel, interior design, pastels, porcelain, salon
-b. in Paris, c. 1710 --Rococo: The French Taste
-Developed as a relief from Late Baroque formalities
-Baroque=grand scale theater -- Rococo= smaller, more intimate stage
-festive rooms, small works
-Rococo replaced Baroque grandeur with playfulness, grace, charm
-However, classicism does appear again in later part of century
-with death of Louis XIV (1715), many of court of Versailles moved to town life
-Parisian town houses= hôtels
-Age of Enlightenment= new way of thinking about world/humankind
-center of critically thinking/questioning/viewing world= France, England
-Paris was the social center of early 18th c. Europe
-aristocracy= primary art patrons
-rocaille= shellwork/pebbles in grottoes = inspiration for Rococo motifs
-French Decorative Arts -furniture= grand, extremely ornate
-furniture design= lighthearted, many S-curves, very decorative, inlays, silks, tapestries
-Last European art style in which archi, ptng, sculp, & decorative arts took same direction
-began primarily as a style of interior design
-playful art, born of sumptuous interior decorations
-Interiors= designed as total works of art, incl. architecture, relief sculptures, wall
paintings, elegant furniture, enchanting small sculpture, ornamental mirrors,
ceramic pieces, silver, easel paintings, decorative tapestry
SEE: Salon de la Princesse, #28-1
-new techs= pastels & porcelain
-Rococo owed more to poetic style of Bernini- rather than intensity of Caravaggio
-took some inspiration from Rubens -art moved from palace halls to fashionable town houses
-style is light and airy, frivolous, playful- sensuous intimacy
-particularly suited to the frivolous life of French court -used brocades and silks rather
than heavy velvet as in Baroque
-forms are light and graceful, many floral patterns
-many pastel colors, whites, silver, gold
-Sculpture -many small figurines and figure groupings
-playful, often mythological
-some gentle eroticism, often nude, lighthearted
-made to fit into interiors, rooms rather than focus of vast structure
-garden ornaments popular
-SEE: Clodion (Claude Michel) - Satyr and Bacchante, c.1755, #28-7
Painting
Poussinistes vs. Rubénistes = draftsmanship vs. color
-intellect vs. emotion -dominated by France and England
-SEE: Watteau, Fragonard, Boucher
-all painted pastoral scenes with lovers and people frolicking, playfulness
-Watteau, Return to Cythera, 1717,#28-4-(acceptance piece for French Royal Acad)
-Rubeniste
-fêtes galantes= elegant entertainment
-Compare to Baroque Rubens's Allegory of the Outbreak of War, #24-37
-Italy remains rooted in Classicism and Christianity
-SEE: Tiepolo, Ceiling fresco at Kaisersaal, Wurzburg, Germany
-Marie Vigee-Lebrun= important woman portrait painter, #28-13
COMPARE WITH:
-Chardin, Greuze, Hogarth, Vigee-Lebrun, Canaletto
-painted more moralistic, middle-class people, genre scenes
-Chardin= narrative, moral tales, dignity of common
-Canaletto introduced vedutas - scenic portrayals of Venetian views
-English painting= Hogarth, Gainsborough, and Reynolds
-Reynolds & Gainsborough= Greatest of Eng portrait painters
-later 18th c.=a revival of Classicism, antique Roman style
-textile industry very important - tapestries
-English minor arts dominated by designs of Thomas Chippendale
-decorative but very functional
-Period also gave birth to American painters John Singleton Copley, Benjamin West,
& Gilbert Stuart
-first American artists= limners (drawers)
Sculpture
-Remained small, intimate, viewed up close--integrated with decorative interiors in townhouses
SEE: Clodion, Satyr and Bacchante, c. 1775, #28-7
Architecture
-Neumann and D. Zimmermann took Rococo decoration to breathtakingly elaborate extremes
-use of gold, white, pastels, ribbonlike moldings, irregular ornmatental designs, lacy, curling motifs
SEE: Kaisersaal, Wurzburg, Germany, c. 1740