Rococo Period vs. The Neoclassical

¶ … rococo period vs. The neoclassical period: The sublimely frivolous vs. The sublime

Art never happens in a vacuum, and the development of artistic forms is conjoined with the political movements of the era. Politics spawns stylistic innovations. While the early 18th century rococo style in French art and decoration was associated with the pre-revolutionary aristocracy, the neoclassical style emerged as a revolt against the ornate aesthetic qualities of rococo and also the aristocratic qualities rococo came to represent. Neoclassicism's emphasis on the art of Greece and Rome became fused with a new political ideal, that of the French Revolution and classical austerity.

The earliest rococo forms can be traced to Versailles and its surrounding chateaux. The rococo itself was a reaction against the more formal baroque. "It was a style of high fashion and had few popular forms" (Kitson 1997) Rococo was playful, although the term was initially used in a pejorative fashion. "The essence of rococo interior decoration is twofold; first, the forms are almost flat instead of being, as in baroque schemes, in high relief; second, architectural and sculptural features are eliminated so that the designer is confronted with a smooth surface, interrupted only by the window recesses and the chimneypiece. In a typical rococo decorative scheme, series of tall wooden panels (including the doors), decorated with brilliantly inventive carved and gilded motifs in low relief, are arranged around the room" (Kitson 1997). As a result, the eye is drawn to these elaborate reliefs and ornate motifs, more so than any other functional aspects of the room.

The subjects of rococo painting tended to be romantic, rather than heroic. The emblematic rococo painter is probably Antoine Watteau, known for his delicate brushstrokes delineating cupids and blushing maidens in pale colors. Some rococo subjects were mythological, but the focus was on the personal and the erotic, not the philosophical and the transcendent. A notable contrast between the rococo and the neoclassical aesthetic that followed can be seen in a comparison of Watteau's Pilgrimage to Cythera (1717) with David's corpus of work. Cythera was the fabled island of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. In the Watteau, cupids flutter above a contemporary couple, either leaving or returning from the island of pleasure. According to the Louvre website, because of such works Watteau become known as the era's master painter of f tes galantes, or courtly scenes in idyllic pastoral locations.

The "rococo style began to decline in the 1760s, denounced by critics who condemned it as tasteless, frivolous, and symbolic of a corrupt society" (Kitson 1997). The spirit of the Enlightenment came into fullest flower, and the ability of politics to better human life was celebrated, rather than the ornamental aspects of courtly dalliance, as in the rococo. "Art was now supposed to move a person's deepest feelings and teach virtue - not cater to wasteful living. Artists and critics believed that it should once again serve the nation and be good for the people, just as it had for the ancient Greeks and Romans. Classical art had depicted serious subjects in a serious way, and so late eighteenth century artists and architects deliberately began imitating Roman and Greek art" (Buser 1995).

The Neoclassical style, which became associated with supporters of the French Revolution, perhaps found its paradigmatic genius in painters like Jacques-Louis David, who favored depictions of mythological subjects of a serious nature, as in David's Death of Socrates (1787). This painting shows the philosopher, unjustly condemned to die for his beliefs by the government, as a kind of pagan saint, statue-like and stoic in his beliefs and powerful and noble in the dark, stark anatomical shadings of the work. David's Death of Marat (1793) shows the French Revolutionary hero as a kind of political saint.

One interesting contrast between the rococo and the neoclassical is the period's differing depictions of women. In the rococo, the female was often central as an object of ornamental desire. Rococo celebrated femininity, the feminine form and a color palate that enhanced the delicacy of its subjects. Even its male rococo subjects were often highly feminized. When neoclassical works depicted women, in contrast, they tended to be idealized representations of freedom, as in the case of Marianne in the symbolic, bare-breasted depiction of Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People (1830). "It shows the allegorical figure of Liberty as a half-draped woman wearing the traditional Phrygian cap of liberty and holding a gun in one hand and the tricolor in the other" (Pioch 2002). Although the fighting men are realistically depicted, including a self-portrait of the artist himself involved in the rebellion, the feminine figure is not -- this may be contrasted with the rococo, where symbolic figures tended to relate only to romance, and both male and female figures were romanticized.